


Back on the Map

by SummerFrost



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (Mentions of) Borderline Personality Disorder, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Depression, Friends to Lovers, Frottage, Future Fic, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Polyamory Negotiations, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, probably too many orgasms in a 24 hour period, questionable road trip physics, speaking of orgasms, though not a main focus in this fic, vague descriptions of the Grand Canyon to mask the fact I've never been there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 05:02:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10734645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerFrost/pseuds/SummerFrost
Summary: When Bitty arches his back to crack it and asks, “D’you ever just…wanna get in the car and drive?” he’s kind of expecting to hear ‘Uh, not really, seeing as I’m a professional athlete living out all my dreams,’ or maybe a vaguely commiserative ‘yeah, dude, totally.’He’s not expecting Kent to push up onto his forearms to look up at Bitty from his sprawl on the floor and say, with all the conviction of someone who’s been told they could solve world hunger with the press of a button, “Let’s do it.”Or: Kent and Bitty go on a road trip.





	Back on the Map

**Author's Note:**

> As always, a huge thank you to my lovely friend and beta, shipped-goldstandard <3 Also thanks to polyamorousparson and abominableobriens, who both listened to me rant about this fic a lot while I wrote it lol
> 
> I used roadtrippers.com to plan out Kent and Bitty's route and then promptly ignored most of it. Travel times/distances may be inaccurate, but all the places they visit are at least loosely based on real locations (but all characters are fictional).
> 
> This fic is heavily inspired by Back on the Map by Kacey Musgraves, and titled thereof.

When Bitty arches his back to crack it and asks, “D’you ever just…wanna get in the car and _drive?”_ he’s kind of expecting to hear _‘Uh, not really, seeing as I’m a professional athlete living out all my dreams,’_ or maybe a vaguely commiserative _‘yeah, dude, totally.’_

He’s not expecting Kent to push up onto his forearms to look up at Bitty from his sprawl on the floor and say, with all the conviction of someone who’s been told they could solve world hunger with the press of a button, “Let’s do it.”

“What?” Bitty rolls onto his stomach, feeling the scrape of his threadbare couch against the strip of skin exposed by his rucked up shirt, and stares at Kent like he’s proposed they waltz up to the moon for brunch.

“Let’s fucking do it,” Kent repeats, like maybe the problem was that Bitty just didn’t hear him properly the first time and the expletive will help. “What the fuck else do you gotta do?”

Nothing, because Bitty is thoroughly single and unemployed and Jack took the dog. Which Kent knows, obviously, and he’s kind of just being an asshole about it. Bitty tries to glare at him but it comes out as more of a worn-out squint. “You’re being ridiculous. We can’t—”

“My entire life’s ridiculous and so’s yours.”

“But Kit—”

“Is in love with Mashkov’s stupid dog and literally will not miss me at all.”

Bitty maintains his squinty glare. “Are you fucking with me?”

Kent grins. A cowlick flops down into his face. “Run away with me, Bits.”

Bitty stares at Kent and Kent stares back, unblinking with that stupid smirk that always gets him what he fucking wants, and Bitty chirps, “I’m not marryin’ you.”

“See how you feel when we get to Vegas,” Kent answers easily, hopping to his feet and patting Bitty companionably on the arm before ambling off with his phone in hand. “Lemme make some calls.”

The door to the spare bedroom clicks shut and Bitty scrubs at his face, looks down at Kit who meets his gaze with mildly unimpressed curiosity. Bitty whispers, “What the fuck?” to the cat, like a crazy person. Kit butts her head against his outstretched hand in sympathy.

 

~*~

 

Bitty presses his forehead to the frame of Kent’s rental car and tries, one last time, to yank himself free from whatever sprawling purgatory he’s been wandering in for the past seventy-two hours. “I can’t believe we’re road tripping in a fucking Prius.”

“Hey,” Kent argues cheerfully, tossing a duffel bag into the back, “the American Dream roadtrip no longer includes murdering the planet.”

Bitty opens his eyes and peers through the tinted windows into the car, which is stuffed full with clothes, snacks, and an unreasonable amount of alcohol. “I thought the American Dream was getting rich and showin’ off for all your neighbors.”

Kent hums thoughtfully as he hops into the passenger seat. “Already did that one. This is like tier two. You get to skip ahead ‘cause we’re best bros. Like, the VIP queue of dream achievement.”

Bitty leans harder against the Prius to feel the thick heat from the metal seep into his skin. “The VIP queue,” he repeats absently, because this is his life now, and pushes away from the car with a soft grunt.

“Bits, c’mon, we’re burning daylight.” Kent leans across the car and beeps the horn for good measure, because he’s an asshole.

“It’s ten AM,” Bitty mutters, but he slides behind the wheel anyway and buckles his seatbelt.

Kent plugs his phone into the auxiliary cord and starts up the playlist they curated yesterday, then throws his feet up on the dashboard, wiggling his bare toes. And, not that Bitty would ever _say_ it, but—he looks good there, with the seat leaned back and the sun playing across the freckles on his cheeks, hair untamed without a snapback to cover it, a self-satisfied smirk stretching across his lips that somehow never tips over the wrong side of _smug._

Bitty uncaps a water bottle and downs half of it before they even hit the highway.

 

~*~

 

Kent rolls his window down and sticks his head out of it like a dog. “I feel like Sandy from _Grease,”_ he says, voice distorting in the wind.

“Stop. I will turn this car around,” Bitty threatens mildly, rolling his eyes.

“That makes you Danny,” Kent adds, like Bitty might not have come to that conclusion on his own. “Ooh, didja get a letterman jacket at Samwell? Is that a real thing?”

Bitty reminds himself that he should not, in fact, take his hands off wheel to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Kent.”

Kent yanks his head back inside the vehicle to warble, “You’re the one that I want! _Ooh, ooh, ooooohhh!”_ in a falsetto that would honestly be impressive if Bitty didn’t mostly want to strangle him.

Bitty turns up the volume on the stereo like maybe it will improve the situation. “I will turn this car _around.”_

“Fine, if we can’t be Danny and Sandy we should be Thelma and Louise,” Kent says. “Let’s take this fucker off a cliff.”

 _“Kent Parson!”_ Bitty shrieks with only a little bit of actual panic, swatting Kent away when he fakes a lunge for the steering wheel. “Get your hands off the wheel of this car _right now.”_

Kent cackles and rolls his window back up, folding his hands in his lap neatly, the perfect picture of innocence.

Bitty lingers in the moment, absorbing the relative calm of the blasting radio. “…didn’t Thelma and Louise murder some guy?”

“Yup,” Kent confirms, popping the ‘p’ cheekily. His grin is salacious, the glint in his gunmetal gray eyes wicked. “Wanna stop by Providence?”

“Oh my God, stop,” Bitty mutters, but he knows Kent can see the smile creeping onto his face.

 

~*~

 

Their first stop is a winery for lunch, where Bitty gets to be a snob about the wine tasting even though he knows they both remember that night, something like two years ago, when Bitty got drunk on a $5 bottle of wine—because it was all he could afford and he was too proud to borrow money for rent let alone to get trashed on a Tuesday night—and explained in an indignant fit of self-righteousness, _‘it all tastes the fucking same, Kent, it’s literally just old grapes.’_

Kent had laughed and laughed and sworn he’d never spend more than $30 on a bottle again and here they are at some rustic-elegant done-up venue that probably cost Kent upwards of $100 a plate, but Bitty has no idea because Kent wouldn’t let him look at the menu.

Bitty is pretty sure Kent is footing the bill for this entire trip. He doesn’t have the energy to feel bad about that.

After the winery, Kent takes over driving because he’s not tipsy but Bitty is, and Bitty spends his time with his temple pressed up against the window, watching the scenery blur by and shift as they leave Rhode Island behind and streak across New Jersey. It’s somewhere around three hours before they stop again, this time at a state park that has a giant map with different walking trails outlined, most of which lead to the same starred location along a river.

Bitty doesn’t have much time to study the map before Kent is ruffling his hair and pulling him along, grinning at him over his shoulder like they share a secret. And, well, they do share plenty of secrets, but none that would matter right now.

The trail Kent picks is short, not terribly difficult but enough to leave Bitty feeling the summer heat just a little, and they make the walk in relative silence except for some commentary about the mundane wildlife—squirrels and birds and a single notable rabbit—and whether or not they should’ve put on sunscreen. And then they reach the end and Bitty realizes, with a twist of exhilaration in his pulse, that the star on the map was a waterfall.

“Wow,” Bitty says, breathless and blinking rapidly as the spray hits his face. The water tumbles from a bluff into a deep pool before narrowing back into a river, and it’s not as intense as the kinds of cliffs Bitty has seen in movies or on TV but it’s beautiful and real and the sound of it is encompassing in a way he hadn’t expected.

“Yeah,” Kent agrees, nudging Bitty with an elbow. “Gimme your phone, let’s take a selfie.”

Bitty hands his phone over without looking, still staring up at the waterfall in wonder, and lets out a yelp when Kent tackles him into the water.

It’s colder than he would’ve expected but his skin was warm and sticky from the sun and it feels like the shock of a sudden kiss—the unbidden receipt of a thing it hadn’t occurred to you to ask for or even give yourself permission to crave.

Bitty’s head breaks above the surface and Kent is treading water about three feet away, cackling like an asshole, so Bitty tells him, “You’re such a dick,” without anything but affection in his voice at all.

Kent peels his snapback off his head and tosses it onto the ground near Bitty’s phone and runs a hand through the soaking mess he’s made of his hair. “But you love me.”

 _And,_ Bitty thinks. His hands might be shaking but it’s from the adrenaline and the cold of the river and he uses them to help tread water and no one could tell a damn thing at all if they saw him. The giddy-shock fades and it occurs to him, in the strange way things sometimes do, that if his life were a movie—if he were the plaything of a director or a dreamer or an artist putting ink onto storybook pages—that this could be the last scene. That he could say, _‘I do,’_ and they’d kiss and it’d be the end, somehow, of all the sharp pains that flow like shards of glass in his veins.

Bitty says, “You don’t have to keep doing this, you know.”

“Doing what?” Kent asks, and it’s incredible how the smile doesn’t fade off his face.

“Performing,” Bitty answers vaguely, lifting a dripping hand out of the current to gesture between them. “Acting like I haven’t been nothing but miserable to be around the past few months.”

Kent is quiet. His smile skitters away and there’s a wounded-ness to the color of his eyes. “I always wanna be around you,” he says, and turns and hauls himself out of the river and vanishes back into the trees.

Bitty whispers, “Liar,” into the roar of the waterfall, so softly he doesn’t even hear it leave his own lips.

 

~*~

 

Bitty catches up with Kent halfway back to the car. Kent turns to him with his mouth hung open a little, like he’s had a speech planned out, but it dies on his tongue and all he says is, “Thanks,” when Bitty hands him his hat. They’re both dripping wet and they grab towels from the car and spread out on the grass in some unspoken agreement, the kind of familiarity Bitty’s not so much taken for granted as just never spent time picking apart. It’s not a subject for dissection.

The sun is harsh enough that Bitty’s considering getting his sunglasses from his bag, but it feels wrong to move, like breaking an armistice. He sheds his shirt instead and rolls onto his stomach to shield his face, cheek resting on his arm facing away from Kent. He dozes in the heat and can’t decide if he’s quite _brooding_ while he does it but it isn’t a sated sleep—it’s heavy in his bones like the water’s soaked through his pores and it feels, terrifyingly, like a pin could touch to his skin and he’d burst all at once.

But Kent doesn’t needle, and they’re quiet until their clothes are dry and the sun is setting and he offers, “I can drive—hotel’s close.”

Bitty pushes up off the grass, arching his back to stretch out his muscles. “Sure.”

Kent bumps Bitty’s shoulder companionably, smiling, and Bitty manages a brittle one back. He’s proud of how little his lips quiver.

 

~*~

 

The hotel really is close; they check in and change out of their wrinkled clothes before wandering off on foot in search of dinner. They wind up at a Hibachi restaurant, brimming with people and the clattering sounds of chefs chopping vegetables and joking with customers, and no one at their table seems to recognize Kent but it looks like one guy across the room does, from the way he’s kind of squinting at them and then peering back down at his phone.

“How much you wanna bet I end up on Twitter tonight?” Kent mutters, his I’m On Camera smirk fixed firmly on his face.

Bitty tries not to grimace. They’d agreed not to post pictures of the trip until they got to Vegas, to prevent people trying to track Kent down or anything creepy like that—and, mostly for Bitty’s peace of mind because Kent places significant faith in heteronormativity, to avoid speculation. “I’m sorry.”

Kent shrugs, probably genuinely not annoyed. “It’s cool. Fans’ll probably get a kick out of it if pictures start cropping up.” He nudges Bitty with an elbow. “‘Where in the world is Kent Parson?’”

“Ridiculous,” Bitty mumbles, flipping through the menu. “If I get steak can I have some of your scallops?”

“Bits,” Kent says, offended, “it’s like you don’t even know me.”

Bitty rolls his eyes and gets the steak medium-rare.

The dinner is nice, distracting while they watch the chef do tricks with the eggs and make an onion volcano, peacefully noisy from all the conversations around them at the table. The couple across from them has a baby that Kent keeps making faces at while the parents aren’t looking and Bitty has the visceral memory of being twenty-five and wanting that with a fierce certainty that terrifies him, now, to have about anything.

Kent laughs fondly at something on his phone and holds it out for Bitty to see: it’s a picture from Tater of Kit curled up on top of his dog Boris—a fluffy mutt of some kind who’s glancing up at Tater with wide, confused eyes.

“Oh my God, she really does love him,” Bitty says, and stabs a scallop off of Kent’s plate.

“I’m a little offended, to be honest.” Kent shoots a text off to Tater that Bitty doesn’t read and pockets his phone. “She won’t wanna come back home.”

“Kit still loves you best,” Bitty assures him, because he’s pretty sure as much as Kent is joking he still needs to hear it.

Kent smiles, his eyes crinkling around the edges of it, and steals three pieces of zucchini because they’re his favorite and he already ate all of his own. He turns back to his phone when another text comes in; Bitty shovels the rest of the zucchini onto his plate while he isn’t looking.

 

~*~

 

Bitty wakes up the next morning to Kent poking him in the face.

“Rise and shine, sunshine,” Kent sing-songs. “Y’want first shower?”

“No,” Bitty grumbles into his pillow. He wants to sleep for maybe ten more hours and also never move again.

“Good, ‘cause I already showered. Up you get,” Kent enthuses, and pulls the covers away when Bitty tries to yank them over his head. “We’re hitting the road in thirty.”

Bitty shoves his face farther into the pillow. “It’s too early, Kent, let me sleep.”

Kent says, “It’s eleven,” with a forced-absence of condescension that would be more impressive if Bitty didn’t feel sick to his stomach anyway.

Bitty lifts his head and looks up at Kent, whose hair is blow-dried and tucked neatly under his snapback already and bag is repacked by the door, and tries very hard not to hate him.

He manages to roll out of bed and into the shower where he lets the hot water seep into the bags under his eyes and the steam curl into his lungs, chest heaving around the way it’s the tiniest bit too hard to breathe.

Kent calls, “High of seventy-five! Tank or shirt?”

“Don’t touch my suitcase,” Bitty snaps, not even sure why except that it feels good to be annoyed by something.

Kent pokes his head into the bathroom with a shit-eating grin. “Why? Got a dildo in there you don’t want me to know about?”

“Oh my God,” Bitty mutters. It’s not enough to make him laugh but it takes the edge off the itch crawling under his skin, and he presses his forehead against the sliding glass to feel the cool ache of something through the heat.

 

~*~

 

It takes more than thirty minutes to get out of the hotel but Kent doesn’t bring it up again, and Bitty takes the first shift driving to make up for it. Their first stop of the day is Gobbler’s Knob, where Punxsutawney Phil lives, because apparently Kent is ridiculous. They take about a million pictures and then get back on the road with Kent behind the wheel.

The next stop is right before they clear Pennsylvania, on a little trail where groups of people are gathered around the water feeding a veritable horde of ducks and fish. Bitty whips out his phone to take pictures to send to Lardo because he knows she’ll be delighted, even if they haven’t talked as much recently. She responds almost immediately.

 **_Lardo (4:34 pm):_ ** _!!!_

 **_Lardo (4:34 pm):_ ** _Bro where tf r u_

Oh, right. Bitty scrubs a hand over his face and reaches into the bag of corn Kent bought to toss some to the ducks.

 **_Bitty (4:37 pm):_ ** _Ummm road tripping with Kent?? Long story haha_

 **_Lardo (4:43 pm):_ ** _Uh do I ask_

Bitty worries at his bottom lip, thumbs hesitating over the keys.

 **_Bitty (4:47 pm):_ ** _No, I’m okay_

 **_Bitty (4:47 pm):_ ** _How’s the beach?_

 **_Lardo (4:48 pm):_ ** _omg its legal to murder someone if theyre really really fucking annoying right_

With Lardo distracted by her harrowing tale of cohabitating with her new girlfriend’s family, Bitty relaxes into the conversation. He really does miss her and it feels good to slip back into the routine, an old script by now. Bitty provides color commentary and listens to her rant and he can almost hear her voice while she does it.

He’s not sure if it makes him homesick, exactly—because Samwell was over half a decade ago and it’s not that he wants it back, really, so much as there’s a feeling he thinks he should be able to have that he doesn’t anymore and he wishes he’d written instructions down back when it was easy.

 

~*~

 

Kent drives again, despite Bitty’s protests, so Bitty keeps texting Lardo and fights the anxious feeling telling him he should check a group chat that hasn’t existed in four years.

At a quarter past five, his mother calls.

Bitty stares down at the buzzing phone like it might bite him. Kent hears it ringing, glances over to catch sight of the caller ID, and turns off the stereo. Because he’s considerate, and now Bitty has to answer.

“Hey, Mom,” he says, trying to sound less tired than he feels.

“Dicky, sweetheart, how are you?”

Bitty closes his eyes. “I’m good, Mama, I’m in—”

“Oh! You’re not driving, are you? Dicky, you know it’s not safe to talk and drive,” she tuts.

 _Then why’d you call me?_ Bitty thinks. “No, it’s alright, Kent’s driving right now. We just got outta Pennsylvania.”

“Oh, good! Tell him I say hi.”

“He says hi back,” Bitty answers automatically, and Kent snorts quietly. “What’s goin’ on, Mama?”

“Oh, nothing! I just missed you, Dicky. You know, we were so disappointed you and Jack didn’t come for the Fourth this year.” Bitty winces. He wishes Kent had left the radio on. “And now you’re takin’ this trip with Kent and I just hope you’ll visit before Jack’s season starts up. Thanksgiving is so far away, baby! And I looked at the schedule and Jack has a game on—”

Bitty’s lungs feel too small for the air he needs to breathe. “It’s just been busy.”

As usual, his mom isn’t really listening. “Oh, well, I know it can be hard down here with the family but really, baby, if you weren’t quite so… _combative_ about things and just let Aunt Judy alone I know you’d have a better time, and we’re still your family and we _miss_ you—”

“It’s not that,” Bitty insists, voice strained. “I miss you too. I just—We’ve just had so much goin’ on, okay? Maybe—maybe we can find a weekend in August.”

“Oh, that would be great!” Mama agrees. “You know your daddy will have camp already but I’m sure he’ll have time to see you. Oh, and maybe that new farmer’s market will be open. I told you about the farmer’s market, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, um, you did.” Bitty clears his throat. “Hey, I—I gotta go Mama. Can I call you later?”

She’s quiet for a second, which means she’s caught out something in his tone. “Sweetie, is everything okay?”

The sun is low in the sky, not quite setting but close enough to it that the colors have changed, just a little. Bitty says, “Yeah, of course, Mama. Kent, um—Kent just needs me to drive now, I’m sorry. I love you.”

“I love you too, baby. I love you so much,” she answers, too emphatically. “You know you can tell me if something’s upsetting you, right?”

Bitty says, “Yeah,” and hangs up before he can test that theory.

Kent’s eyes are on the road. He reaches to turn the radio back on, hesitates, changes his mind. He asks, “Why haven’t you told her?”

Bitty shrugs, and turns his face so Kent can’t see the flash of tears in his eyes. “It’s not really a big deal.”

“Okay, you can fuck off with _that_ right now,” Kent snaps so fiercely Bitty flinches and nearly bashes his head against the window. “Why?”

Something in the curve of Bitty’s throat cracks and his voice is already hoarse when he pleads, “Because I’m scared, okay? Because when I came out she wouldn’t believe me and I had to—it was like a _weapon,_ when I told her—I practically rubbed it in her face that I was in love, that I was gonna marry him, that the grandbabies she wanted so fucking badly would be with _Jack._ And I don’t know what she’ll say—what _Coach_ will do—because at least Jack Zimmermann was the son they should’ve had and now they’re stuck with _me.”_

Kent makes a broken sound like he might be crying but Bitty doesn’t turn to look. “I—Bitty—”

“I feel like a fraud,” Bitty whispers. He licks the tear-salt off his lips.

“You’re not a fraud,” Kent insists, desperate and thick and like he even believes it. “You’re a fucking person, Bitty, you—”

“Don’t,” Bitty begs. “Please, please don’t.”

Kent clears his throat and says, “Okay,” and turns the radio back on, and Bitty closes his eyes so he won’t have to look at him.

 

~*~

 

They pull up to a trail less than an hour later. There are dark clouds overhead, but when Bitty rolls his window down the air is still warm, muggy with a heavy energy.

Kent says, “Uh, I had a hike planned here, but—it takes like an hour and it’s getting kinda late, and it looks like it’s gonna rain, so—we could skip it?”

“No, let’s do it,” Bitty tells him, because he’s already ruined enough of this trip and what fucking right does he have to take so much from him?

“Sure,” Kent agrees carefully, and scrambles out of the car when Bitty climbs out before the engine’s even off.

It’s a beautiful hike, and Bitty’s glad he was already wearing his sneakers because the path is more difficult than yesterday’s, a steeper slope with rocks and logs to climb over. The exertion takes his mind off things, a little. Enough. He can’t tell how far along they are when the clouds break and the rain is on them all at once, a steady deluge of thick drops that he can feel splattering against his skin.

“Shit,” Kent swears, though he doesn’t actually seem too bothered. “Should we go back?”

Bitty looks behind them at the way they came and closes his eyes briefly, lets everything fade besides the rain on his skin and the sound of it against the dirt path. He turns back to Kent and points out, “We’ll be soaked either way. Might as well finish.”

Kent grins, pats Bitty on the shoulder, and starts back up the trail. They’re drenched in minutes, but it’s a warm rain and the clouds in the distance are a surreal orange, backlit by the sun in a way that almost makes Bitty think the rain should be golden, pooling rich and shimmering at his feet. He cups his hands to watch the way the clear water sluices against his palms before he lets it splash to the ground.

The hike ends on a grassy bluff, an outcropping that overlooks a lake and a vast stretch of trees below them. Bitty looks over at Kent and, finding his face open, sits along the edge so his legs dangle over the stretch of land below them. Kent plops down next to him, close enough that their thighs touch, and Bitty doesn’t question why it’s the easiest thing he’s done all day to lean his cheek against Kent’s shoulder.

“I think,” Bitty says, when Kent wraps an arm around him and splays his fingers along Bitty’s hip. “I think the worst part is that—nothing even happened. We didn’t—we didn’t fight all the time, or cheat, or—or anything you’re supposed to hate someone over. I _don’t_ hate him.”

Kent hums sympathetically and says nothing.

Bitty continues with earnest, “I spent so many years thinking—this is how it is, you know? This is the best it gets.” He hesitates, goes quiet under the backdrop of the rain. “I still think that, sometimes.”

“You know what I think?” Kent asks, and Bitty doesn’t stop him this time. “I think you stopped being happy a long time ago and I watched it happen. And, yeah, I was fucking pissed about it at first. I was _jealous,_ Bits, you—you had all the shit I dreamed about and if I couldn’t have it, I mean—I guess I was living through you, kinda. And it wasn’t even—it was before the bakery, you know? It wasn’t just that.”

Bitty sucks in a deep breath through his nose and nestles closer against Kent’s side. “Yeah, I know.”

“And I think you lived in this dying relationship for fucking years and we all just let you because—” Kent laughs bitterly, around the tightness in his voice. “What the fuck did any of us know? We put you and Jack on this pedestal, you know? It was so fucking unfair. Being complacent isn’t the same as being happy and—no one ever tells you. No one asks.”

“Yeah,” Bitty whispers. He knows, abstractly, that he’s crying, but he can’t tell because the rain takes up his whole face and washes away the tears before he can feel them.

“I’m so sorry, Bits.” Kent’s other arm wraps around Bitty’s front and suddenly they’re hugging, Kent’s face pressed into Bitty’s water-logged hair. “So fucking sorry.”

Bitty sobs, a choked-up hurt little sound, and he can’t tell if the way he’s trembling is from the cold setting in or how it feels to be held for what feels like the first time in months. The rain is relentless, a steadfast witness to the unraveling of the hurt wracking through Bitty’s body, to the gentle stroke of Kent’s hand along his back through the soaked through fabric of his shirt.

They cling together until the thunder drives them apart. Kent startles at the sound and says, “Shit, we gotta get inside,” and they pick their way back down the trail as quickly as they can manage.

Back at the car, they throw two layers of towels down to protect the seats and shelter inside, breathing hard and shivering when the adrenaline wears away. Bitty presses his fingers into his eyelids and chirps, “Hope you don’t have anything else planned today.”

Kent laughs. “Nah, just a bed and breakfast. It’s supposed to be cute. You ready?”

Bitty looks over with a tired, aching smile. “Yeah, thanks.”

 

~*~

 

The bed and breakfast is a tiny thing, owned by an old couple that ushers them inside as soon as they see the car pull up. Martha, a warm woman with graying, wiry hair pulled into a bun, shepherds them upstairs to the laundry room so they can put all their wet clothes in the dryer and change in their room, and informs them that her husband Russell is finishing up dinner.

They change efficiently, Bitty giggling at Kent when he spends twice the amount of time trying to fix his hair as he did to get dressed and getting flipped off for his trouble, and head back downstairs where they find two couples—occupants of the other rooms, Bitty assumes—who are also joining them for dinner. It’s not a long wait before Russell joins them with a pot of chili, and Bitty can’t think of a more perfect food for the night he’s having—and, honestly, the day he’s already had.

The conversation is polite, small talk about jobs and vacations that Bitty and Kent steer away from themselves as much as they can until Martha turns to them and asks, without a trace of irony, “So, Kent, what do you do?”

Bitty kind of freezes and waits for someone to laugh, like they’re letting Martha in on a joke. But no one does and Kent says, “Oh, I’m a certified financial planner,” without missing a beat, which is a weirdly specific lie and Bitty’s going to have to ask him about that later. “I’m pretty boring.”

Bitty snorts at that, which is a mistake because everyone looks at him, Kent with an amused eyebrow raised, almost as if in challenge. “Um, just—you’re not _boring._ Don’t be silly.”

“Aww, that’s sweet,” one of the other men at the table says. He nudges his girlfriend and accuses, “Why don’t you ever call _me_ not-boring?”

“I’m a little boring,” Kent counters, smirking. “My cat’s my best friend.”

Bitty huffs, offended. _“I’m_ your best friend.”

“You don’t count,” Kent argues mildly, and steals half of Bitty’s cornbread.

“‘The cat’s my best friend,’” Bitty grumbles under his breath. “The cat didn’t pack up her life into a Prius for you.”

Before Kent can respond, Martha asks, “What about you, Eric?”

“Hm?” Bitty looks up, still kind of on the best friend thing and wondering if he should say it’s Lardo, just to spite Kent, when he realizes she probably meant his career. Which—does a spectacular job of ruining the little pocket of grumpy-good mood he’s been building, really. “Oh. Um, well, I sort of—”

“Eric’s a baker,” Kent cuts in brightly. “He’s gonna have his own place someday.”

The _again_ goes unsaid where it should be tacked on at the end, but Bitty feels it in the emphatic press of Kent’s knee against his under the table, the little knowing glint in his eye when he glances over at Bitty sidelong, and it excises some of the pain.

“That’s awesome, man,” the second-other man—Ben, maybe?—says. “I bet you’ll make it happen.”

“Oh, um, thanks,” Bitty tells him, blushing down at his food.

Martha hums warmly. “Well, maybe you can give us some pointers on dessert, honey. I do make a mean blueberry crumble, though.”

“I’m sure it’s lovely,” Bitty assures her, and it’s the truth; this whole _place_ is lovely, a strange tender bubble of a house. He wonders how Kent found it. “Blueberry is Kenny’s favorite, though, so y’all might have to beat him off with a stick if you want any.”

Kent starts just a little, the awkward twitch of his knee and clink of his fork against the plate his only tells, and it takes Bitty a moment of wracking his brain to figure out why until— _oh._ He’s not even sure why he used the nickname—just that it felt right on his lips when he said it, that it somehow matched the intimacy of the moment and now—

“I think we’ll let you do the corralling on the front, huh son?” Russell jokes, and the conversation carries on without them, ignorant of the miniature crisis Bitty’s just caused.

Kent seems to recover, though, and takes another quarter of Bitty’s cornbread as if in compensation.

 

~*~

 

The blueberry crumble is excellent. Kent eats two pieces and Bitty pretends to nag him over it even though he knows full well Kent could be putting far more calories away than this, if he was bulking for the pre-season like he’s supposed to be instead of traipsing across the country with Bitty, because it seems expected of them and it’s not like Kent can just say, _‘Oh it’s fine I’m actually a professional athlete with insane dietary needs.’_

So Bitty teases and Kent whines and Martha spoons the second piece onto Kent’s plate when Bitty is distracted, and Bitty retaliates by insisting on helping with the dishes after everyone else moves into a sitting room to socialize more before they start heading up to bed.

Martha is humming under her breath while she washes and Bitty dries, and it reminds him so much of Georgia that there’s a part of him that itches to call his mother and pour his heart out, and another part that wants to crawl under the sink and hide. He scrubs at a stubborn lingering speck of chili and does neither.

When the dishes are done, Bitty turns to rejoin everyone in the other room but Martha stops him with a hand on his arm.

“Good Lord, honey, you look like you seen’a ghost,” she teases, laughing, and Bitty consciously relaxes the tension in his shoulders. “I just wanted to talk to you for a second.”

“Oh, um, sure?” Bitty asks, “Did you need help with something? I’m happy to—”

“Eric, honey,” she interrupts gently, and Bitty purses his lips shut. “When Kent called and made the reservation, he asked for twin beds. And we understand...why. But Rus and me, we—well, we thought you should know that our daughter’s been with her wife almost fifteen years now, and we love them both with all we have.”

Bitty has a million things trying to fight their way out of his throat and tears in his eyes and all that comes out is, “That’s wonderful.”

“And we thought,” Martha says slowly, her hand a gentle pressure on Bitty’s arm, “that maybe you and Kent would like to know we’ve got a room open with a queen. And that you’re welcome here, just the way you are.”

“Thank you,” Bitty whispers, and all the other words jam up against the back of his teeth and the pain of it comes out in a tamped-down sob, a hand to his mouth, and Martha is reaching her arms up around his neck and pulling him down into a hug, and it’s relief and bitterness and the slow tired ache of having cried but not enough that has him practically weeping into her chest. “Thank you,” he repeats, “thank you.”

When Bitty’s cried himself out—which he thinks might be an embarrassing amount of time later, but he can’t be sure—he finally heads back into the sitting room and plops down next to Kent on the couch, who’s in an animated discussion with Ben about baseball, of all things.

Kent takes one look at Bitty and murmurs, “You okay?” putting a hand up to his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Bitty says, “tell you later?”

Kent nods and squeezes Bitty’s shoulder. He doesn’t pull his hand away.

Bitty clears his throat and says, “I don’t know why y’all are talkin’ baseball when football’s the best sport in America.”

The women cackle and Ben looks genuinely affronted, but Bitty’s focused on the way Kent mutters, “Those are fighting words, Bittle. I thought you loved me.”

“Hockey’s Canadian,” Bitty answers easily, and Kent’s startled giggle-honk is worth the strange looks they get from the room.

 

~*~

 

When people start begging off to turn in for the night, Bitty pulls Kent aside and explains, worrying at his lip, “Um, so—Martha kind of…misunderstood some things? And I didn’t know how to, um, I didn’t correct her? And I’m really sorry I just got real emotional and—”

Kent holds up a hand. “Wait, back up, Bits. What happened?”

“Um. In the kitchen, Martha told me—she told me her daughter’s married to a woman, and they’re really happy for her and they love her, and that we—that we’re safe here, and she gave us a room with one bed because—um.” Bitty takes a shaky breath. “She thinks we’re together, um, like, you know, and—and I should’ve told her we weren’t but I was thinking about Mama and I couldn’t stop _crying,_ and—”

“Bits, woah, it’s okay.” Kent puts his hands on Bitty’s shoulders and smiles, eyes bright. “It’s not a big deal, alright? It’s okay.”

“It’s _not,”_ Bitty insists, and if he weren’t run dry of tears he might be crying again now and as it is his voice is quivering. “It’s not okay, I just _outed_ you to this woman and—”

Kent slips his arms around Bitty’s back and steps forward and Bitty’s face is in the crook of his neck, buried there and pressed against the warm skin. “I’m not worried. They don’t even know who I am, Bits, you saw. And even if she did, I’d trust her not to tell anyone. You really think she’d do that?”

Bitty sniffles. “I guess not. I just—I dunno. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to forgive,” Kent answers.

“We gotta share a bed,” Bitty points out nervously, pulling away.

Kent rolls his eyes and uses the hand still on Bitty’s back to steer him towards the stairs. “Like we’ve never done that before.”

“Drunken cuddle piles don’t count,” Bitty retorts, a smile creeping onto his face.

Kent hums. “Whatever you say, Bits. Whatever you say.”

They grab their bags, rescuing their clothes from the dryer, and relocate to the room across the hall that Martha left open for them. It’s a frumpy little thing, if Bitty’s being honest, with Victorian-style décor and heavy furnishings, but the bathroom is renovated and the space feels lived-in and warm. Bitty’s never stayed at a bed and breakfast before; he wonders if they’re all like this or if it’s Martha and Russell, effusing comfort into the space.

Bitty changes into sleep shorts and a worn-out Samwell hockey shirt, the one he swears shouldn’t be able to still smell like musty attic and Axe but kind of does, if he closes his eyes when he smells it, and Kent is shirtless in a pair of sweatpants because he always overheats at night.

The bed is big enough that they don’t really have to touch if they don’t want to, but they end up sort of in the middle anyway, arms nearly brushing. Kent reads on his Kindle for a while and Bitty scrolls through Twitter, answers a text he missed from Lardo earlier in the day, thinks about texting his mother but it’s early enough in the night that she might still be awake and try to call him.

Eventually Kent finishes his book chapter and Bitty runs out of Internet to stall with and the lights get turned out so they can sleep.

Bitty closes his eyes and tries not to think and does not sleep. There’s a fatigue creeping through him, a heaviness to it that presses down on his chest so his breathing can’t settle, can’t relax enough in the face of his grieving burnout to do anything but spiral again. He feels like he could shake apart and it would be a gift.

“Kent?” Bitty whispers, half-hoping he won’t hear.

Kent shifts a little, drowsy. “Mm?”

Bitty’s voice is a small, quivering thing. “Would you hold me?”

Kent says, “Yeah, c’mere,” and Bitty goes. His face is pressed to Kent’s bare chest, his entire body curled around Kent’s side like he can slip right through the crevices and away, away, away and shrink into nothing and Kent is stroking his hand up and down Bitty’s back and pressing him too close to go anywhere.

Bitty’s breathing is harsh, ragged like he’d like to cry but he’s forgotten how and Kent keeps murmuring, “I know, Bits, I know,” even though nothing’s been said, and Bitty falls asleep believing him.

 

~*~

 

Bitty wakes up feeling groggy and heavy-limbed, with Kent leaning over him brushing the hair away from his face. “Mm,” Bitty grumbles, pushing his face up into the contact almost sub-consciously. “Wha’ time’s it?”

“Breakfast,” Kent answers, his voice rough with sleep and something warmer. “You wanna eat with everyone, right?”

Bitty makes a disgruntled noise and flops over onto his stomach, face buried into the pillow. “Wanna sleep. Forever.”

Kent hums entirely unsympathetically. “Tough luck,” he says, and digs his fingers into Bitty’s sides.

 _“Kent!”_ Bitty squeals, twisting around to try and fend off the tickling, legs flailing. He catches Kent in the stomach and Kent grunts, flops off in defeat with a grin on his face before pushing up onto his forearms and looking at Bitty smugly, like a victory.

Bitty can feel the blood flowing in his veins and a pounding urge in his head that he indulges when he lunges, tackling Kent down to the bed and tickling under his armpits. Kent laughs and squirms and does absolutely nothing to get Bitty off of him at all, hips wriggling uselessly.

So when the laughter dies and Bitty’s hands still—when the only sounds left are harsh, panting breaths and the faint voices carrying up the stairs—Bitty finds himself with Kent pinned under him, looking up at him with so much raw affection that Bitty feels like a voyeur, like he’s ripped off the wallpaper and punched through the drywall and found the bare bones of a thing he was never supposed to see like this.

Bitty chokes on it.

His throat goes tight and he flops off to the side, flat on his back and gaze fixed firmly on the ceiling and breath held hostage in his lungs. He presses the air out slowly through his nose and has to force his eyes shut when Kent squeezes lightly at his ankle before standing nonchalantly. Like he hasn’t been caught out, like Bitty was supposed to already know.

Maybe he was. Maybe he _did._ But it just feels—it’s too much, leaves him reeling like when all the lights go out in your childhood home and you should know how to get around but you still bang your knee on the coffee table on the way to dig out a flashlight—because it’s supposed to be the kind of thing you ache with, stuff in the spaces between your ribs and ignore and pretend it shouldn’t feel the way it does and here Kent is waving it like a flag, like it’s the best thing he’s ever done.

Bitty rolls out of bed and protests, “Put on a _shirt,_ you brute!” when he catches Kent halfway out the door without one.

“Yes sir,” Kent answers, very seriously, and smirks up at him while he digs through his bag and procures a faded Henley that he tugs over his head. “Right away, sir.”

“I hate you,” Bitty grumbles, shouldering past him to start down the stairs.

“Mhm,” Kent agrees. He ruffles Bitty’s hair and hops out of reach before Bitty can retaliate. “But you love me, too.”

Bitty is, mercifully, saved from answering by the crowd that greets them downstairs with a chorus of sleepy good mornings, gathered around the table with plates stuffed with breakfast. He and Kent make themselves plates and join in the conversation, about plans for the day and the weather—which is still dreary, if the thin light filtering through the windows is any indication.

They were supposed to leave by ten but neither of them seem in a hurry to make that happen, content to linger with the other guests and their hosts, talking about a lot of nothing in the soothing, listless way that lulls people into comfort. Eventually though, plates clear away and Martha refuses to let Bitty help with the linens, so he and Kent trudge back upstairs to gather their things and get back on the road.

He hugs both Martha and Russell before they go, lingering just a little longer than he probably should and not bringing himself to care. Kent does the same, and whispers something in Martha’s ear before he pulls away that makes her laugh with surprise and shoot him a bewildered look.

In the car, with Kent driving and Bitty fiddling with the playlist selection, Bitty asks, “What’d you tell her?”

“Who, Martha?” Kent asks. He purses his lips while he merges lanes on the highway and then smirks, glancing sideways at Bitty. “I told her to google me.”

Bitty’s eyes widen and he gapes at Kent in disbelief. “You _didn’t!_ Why?”

Kent shrugs. “I wanted her to know what she meant to us.” He pauses for effect, his smile turning positively smug. “Plus, I thought she’d panic less when she saw the two-thousand dollar tip.”

Bitty should probably be more surprised than he is. He turns to look out the window and presses his forehead to the glass. “You’re a ridiculous man.”

“I know,” Kent agrees cheerfully, then deliberately brake-checks the Mustang tailgating them and throws up his middle finger with the same enthusiasm.

Bitty rolls his eyes fondly, playing with his phone to have something to do with his hands. Kent drives like a maniac—something Bitty has learned to ignore after years of experience—so Bitty has little pity for someone trying to out-crazy him. He does also know better than to distract Kent during a bout of passive-aggressive (heavy on the aggressive) driving though, so he waits until the Mustang finds an opening in the traffic and speeds around them to whisper, “Thank you.”

Kent is too busy cursing out the Mustang to answer verbally, but he reaches over and squeezes Bitty’s arm with a gentleness that’s in stark contrast to the creative things he’s suggesting Mr. Mustang do with his muffler.

“Oh my God, please don’t start a drag race with this car,” Bitty pleads, groaning. “We’re not in your Porsche.”

“Have a little faith in Gertrude, Bits,” Kent says, patting the dash affectionately. “She’s got spunk.”

“I’ll show you spunk,” Bitty mutters, nonsensically, and sticks his tongue out at the Mustang when they weave past it again. Because he’s the mature one.

The Mustang does eventually speed off ahead of them, surprising no one, but Kent doesn’t seem that irritated. He coerces Bitty into giving him a granola bar and munches while he drives one-handed, something that used to make Bitty’s life flash before his eyes but he’s mostly desensitized to by now.

“How’s your mom?” Kent asks through a mouthful, gesturing vaguely with his hand. “Like, besides the shit with Jack.”

Bitty shrugs. “She’s pretty good, I guess? We haven’t been talking as much recently, and I know it’s my fault, kind of, but I still miss it.”

Kent hums sympathetically. “I mean, it sounds like she’s not always the easiest person to talk to. No offense.”

“I guess.” Bitty sighs. “She didn’t use to be like that? Sometimes I think—oh, Lord. This sounds terrible.” Bitty scrubs a hand over his face shamefully. “Sometimes I think I shouldn’t’ve come out. I wanted to be able to talk to her about boys and everything, but I still don’t feel like I can, and now everythin’ else is awkward too.”

Kent finishes his granola bar and crumples up the wrapper. “No, I get it. It’s supposed to be easier after but it’s not, always, and it’s like—why the fuck did I bother?”

“Yeah. So—I dunno.” Bitty brings his knees to his chest, curling up in the seat. The conversation settles for a moment, and then he asks, “Um, are you talking to Jack? I mean—I don’t—it’s obviously fine if you are. I’m just curious.”

Kent’s fingers tap against the steering wheel. The GPS says their exit is in two miles but he won’t merge yet, Bitty knows. “Uh, a little. I dunno, it’s—it’s been a fucking weird couple months.”

Bitty frowns, closes his eyes with his head leaned back against the seat. “I’m sorry. God, I’m so—you worked so hard to fix things with him and I—don’t let me ruin this for you, okay?”

“Hey, you didn’t, okay? It’s not ‘cause of you,” Kent says, then hesitates. “I mean, I actually—I kinda feel like he was just playing nice because it made you happy? But that’s not—it’s not like you fucked up something we actually had.”

“Kent—”

“It’s like—I think me and Zimms were always supposed to be those guys who meet up once a year and get all nostalgic for the glory days, you know? You drink and get a little weepy over what you used to be and—you go home to who you are now.” Kent runs a hand through his hair and nearly misses the exit. He swears, swerves into the lane at the last minute, waves at the car behind them in acknowledgement. “And, you know, it was never gonna matter how we tried to make it something else. It’s not your fault that took me a fucking decade to figure out.”

“Very mature of you,” Bitty remarks, a little drily.

Kent answers with exaggerated cheer, “Thanks, it’s the therapy.”

Bitty snorts, smiles fondly. “Where’re we going, anyway?”

“Theme park!” Kent says, his enthusiasm genuine this time. “It’s gonna be baller.”

 

~*~

 

The park they’re at, Cedar Point, is apparently kind of famous for rollercoasters. And sure, Bitty’s been to the Six Flags back in Georgia, so it’s not like he’s never been on one before or anything. It’s just that apparently Kent wants them to die, and Cedar Point is happy to oblige.

“I hate you!” Bitty screeches, and he’s not even sure if Kent can hear him before the wind whips the words away. “I hate you _so much,_ Kent!”

Kent is screaming euphorically, arms thrown in the air, while their cart careens down a drop so big it _has_ to be illegal, it fucking _has_ to be, and Bitty claws at his shoulder just to have something tying him to the physical plane of existence because he’s not entirely convinced this rollercoaster isn’t designed to fling his soul from his body.

Kent pries Bitty’s hand off his shoulder and forces their arms back up in the air together so Bitty becomes an unwilling participant in the theatrics _,_ and shouts, “C’mon, Bits! Let loose!” and _dear God that’s a loop._

“We’re going to die!” Bitty informs him. “And then I’ll find you in Hell and kill you!”

Somehow, Kent has the composure to honest-to-God _wink_ at him right before they rocket through the loop upside down, and Bitty might kind of white-out for a bit because all of a sudden they’re pulling back into the station and he can hear himself think again, mostly, and Kent is laughing and helping Bitty unbuckle his harness because his fingers are shaking.

“Hey,” Kent says while they’re waiting to find their picture at the station, “you’re okay though, right?”

“Hm?” Bitty shakes his head to clear the still-frantic pounding of his heart. “Um. Yeah? Mostly?”

“Woah, hey. You wanna sit down, Bits?” Kent takes Bitty by the shoulders and steers him over to a bench, sitting them down with an arm around him to steady him.

Bitty leans against Kent lightly, more because it feels nice to be pressed up against him than anything. “I kind of want to die and kind of wanna get right back on. Those might be the same thing.”

He laughs shakily and Kent snorts, squeezes his arm affectionately. “Maybe just pause on that one, yeah?”

Bitty nods, wiggling his fingers, and then puts his face in his hands. “Ugh, this is embarrassin’. I’m really fine—we should go.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Kent says, rubbing Bitty’s arm. “Y’know, Jeff is scared shitless of rollercoasters. He literally won’t get on one.”

Bitty snorts and tries to act like that doesn’t make him feel as much better as it does. “I…could be persuaded to have lunch before we try another ride.”

Kent ruffles Bitty’s hair before standing. “Let’s check out our picture and then eat those stupid turkey legs.”

“Oh my God,” Bitty mutters, because the giant turkey legs look _awful_ and he definitely wants to try one. And then he says, “Oh my _God,”_ again, because their picture is up on the screen and it’s terrible.

Bitty is screaming wildly, clutching at Kent’s arm in what can either be described as terror or retribution, while Kent laughs—probably both at Bitty’s expense and from exhilaration, because Kent Parson is a filthy adrenaline junkie and Bitty isn’t bitter about that at all.

“I’m buying it, oh my God,” Kent says. “Holy shit. I’m fucking—Bits, you gotta let me fucking tweet this.”

 _“Why?”_ Bitty hisses, but Kent is already going up to the counter and handing his credit card over.

“I’m framing this. I’m literally framing this picture.” Kent ends up with two copies, both of which are presently unframed; he shoves one of them into the plastic bag they came with and pulls out his phone to tweet a photo of the other copy. “I’m taking this picture with me on roadies and looking at it when I get sad. That’s how much I love this picture.”

“You’re taking—” Bitty splutters, because what the fuck is he supposed to do with that information, and then bursts into giggles. “You’re so—I don’t even know what to call you.”

Kent hums, as if he agrees completely, and slings an arm around Bitty’s shoulders to steer them towards the concessions area to buy their lunch.

 

~*~

 

The picture blows up Bitty’s Twitter. Which he was expecting; every time Kent mentions him in a post he gets a surge of followers, which never fails to give him a rush of excitement and anxiety—because Bitty is _out_ on Twitter, unapologetically so, and he knows for a fact there are already Tumblr theories about him and Kent which are technically unfounded, but too close to the truth for comfort.

What Bitty was not expecting was the influx of messages from his friends, wanting to know why the fuck he’s in Ohio with Kent Parson. Which, okay, he probably should have expected this at some point and he’s honestly a little surprised Lardo kept a lid on things for a whole twenty-four hours, but then again—maybe she’s fallen a little out of touch with everyone, too.

It’s not just the SMH either—seeing as Bitty has formed new relationships since graduating college, thank you—and it’s strange for him to try and quantify how his friends from various careers and chance meetings are simultaneously more _and_ less mystified by Kent. Because sure, most of them don’t care about hockey and they knew, vaguely, that Bitty’s friend Kent who hung around every summer and then mysteriously vanished the other 8 or 9 months of the year was kind of a big deal—both in the famous-person sense and the Eric’s-best-friend sense—but they’re now mostly just confused as to why Bitty fucked off for a week-long cross-country drive with this man.

But the SMH—they know, or at least suspect depending on just how much information they’ve been privileged with, that Bitty has just fucked off across the country with his famous ex-boyfriend’s equally famous ex-boyfriend for reasons unknown, and didn’t tell them a damn thing about it. And they are concerned.

Well, almost everyone is concerned. Chowder just wants to know if Bitty and Kent would like to visit him and Farmer in California, since they’re already heading out that way and all, which means he’s worried but a good enough friend that he’s pretending he isn’t. Chowder was always Bitty’s favorite.

And it’s—Bitty spends a lot of time brooding at his phone that night, after pictures at the Campbell’s giant soup can and the Gemini Giant, wondering what the hell to say. He feels a little indignant and a little bitter and a lot like it should be easier, even after all this time, to remember what they need to hear. He doesn’t know how to say _‘I’m fine’_ and he doesn’t know how to say _‘Please don’t forget Jack’_ and he doesn’t, for the life of him, know how to say _‘It feels good to be terrified by something again.’_

Bitty thanks Chowder for the invitation and promises to try, if Kent’s schedule works out. He turns his phone off, but then he has nothing to do with himself so he turns it back on and goes back to tackling his Twitter activity and pretends, so well he almost believes it, that he’s too busy to answer the others.

Kent comes back in from a shower with sweatpants slung low on his hips and flops onto Bitty’s bed, trapping Bitty under an arm. “Sorry I blew your cover. I didn’t, uh—I didn’t realize this was like, a stealth mission.”

Bitty’s eyes trace the path of a water droplet along the curve of Kent’s shoulder. He’s got a tan line from the tank top he was wearing today and the faint spread of new freckles under pink, nearly-sunburned skin. “S’okay. I could’ve told them sooner. Now it’s this whole thing, you know? But I—ugh, I don’t know.”

“Mm,” Kent hums sympathetically. He reaches his hand up to pick at a loose thread in the collar of Bitty’s shirt, knuckles just barely brushing the underside of Bitty’s jaw with the motion. If Bitty were to turn his head, he could kiss them. He’s startled by the urge of it, the impulse skittering behind his eyes with the sudden hot flash of clarity of a lightning strike, the brief glimpse of the patterns of clouds and quivering trees that makes the dark feel even starker when it’s over.

Bitty stretches and says, “I’m so tired,” at the exact moment Kent suggests, “We should go clubbing.”

Bitty freezes mid-stretch to level Kent with a flat look. “No.”

“C’mon, it’ll be fun!” Kent whines, and he’s got the same smirk on his face that started this whole damn thing. When Bitty doesn’t respond, he adds, “I’ll fight you for it.”

“What?” Bitty lowers his arms and rubs at the bridge of his nose.

Kent forms his hands into fists and menaces them at Bitty, which is ridiculous looking because he’s lying on his stomach. “I’ll fight you—let’s go. If I win we go clubbing.”

Bitty takes a moment to process. “You,” he repeats slowly, “will _fight_ me?”

Kent lunges instead of answering, because he’s a dick. He tackles Bitty back against the pillows and Bitty panics, tosses his phone away to keep it from getting jammed into any body parts in the fray, scrambles to avoid being put in a headlock.

“You _brute!”_ Bitty squeals. “You’re— _oof_ —you’re a fucking—professional athlete—this is _unfair.”_

Kent laughs and laughs, and laughs even harder when Bitty jams a knee into his hip and uses the shock and momentum to flip them and pin Kent by the wrists.

“You play dirty,” Kent says, breathless and grinning up at Bitty like it’s a point of admiration.

It probably is, to Kent. Fucking Aces hockey.

“Learned from the best,” Bitty answers, and it comes out less chirpy than he meant it to because—Kent’s wrists don’t even flex under Bitty’s restraint, pliant and given-over and home-come, and if Bitty slid his hands up, his fingers would trail across the wrinkles and lines of Kent’s hands and their fingers could weave together and he doesn’t know if that would be more intimate than this.

“Bits,” Kent says, like he’s already said Bitty’s name once and he missed it. “You won—we can stay in.”

Bitty swallows so hard his chest flexes with it. “No, let’s—let’s go out.”

 

~*~

 

The club is dark and crowded in all the best ways, the kind of energy that makes life feel pleasantly viscous, like the slow pull of taffy between teeth. Bitty thinks it should be overwhelming and can’t remember why he feels that way at all.

Kent slides up next to Bitty at the bar, running a hand through his hair. Bitty’s pretty sure he was wearing a snapback when they got here but that’s probably a lost cause by now. “Gonna go dance?”

Bitty shrugs noncommittally. “I wanna? But honestly I don’t wanna get hit on right now.”

Which is kind of a conceited thing to say, but the place they’re at is pretty gay and honestly they both know it’ll happen; Kent’s been flitting between dance partners since they got here. Bitty’s not entirely unconvinced there wasn’t tongue involved with that last girl.

Kent offers, “Dance with me, then.”

Bitty hesitates mid-sip of his drink. “Hm?”

“C’mon,” Kent says, “no one’s gonna hit on you when you’re already with the second hottest guy in here.”

Bitty raises both eyebrows, because he’s never been able to do just the one. “Second hottest,” he repeats drily, and pretends the heat on his face is from the alcohol.

Kent winks, waggles his eyebrows because he’s a dick and a show-off, and drags Bitty by the waist onto the dancefloor.

It’s so easy to slot against Kent’s front, to nestle his shoulder blades against the plane of Kent’s chest, to melt into the notch of his hips and the curve of his neck. The bass is in Bitty’s sternum, co-opting his heartbeat, and Kent dances with his hands on strangers’ hips but his arm is wrapped all the way around Bitty’s belly, possessive and dirty and pulling them flush together like it’s the purest thing in the world to want to belong to someone else’s body.

“Missed this,” Kent murmurs, and Bitty laughs with adrenaline and hysteria and this is not how friends dance, how people with separate dreams and lives and lovers waiting at home dance, how people who want what they had when they walked in dance. “Missed you.”

Bitty turns his head and they’re already so close together that his nose traces a line up Kent’s cheek. They share half a breath before they kiss.

Kent tastes like the three margaritas he’s had, which means Bitty probably tastes like vodka cranberry, and he’s smiling so hard the kiss is probably objectively terrible—all teeth and stretched lips—but Bitty doesn’t care. Kent’s laughing and his hands keep flexing around the fabric of Bitty’s shirt and Bitty doesn’t think he’s ever felt happiness ooze this soft from Kent, a giddy thing so out of place from the carved up energy he casts around him like the laying of spikes.

“Hey,” Kent says, a hand coming up so he can brush his thumb across Bitty’s cheek. “Let’s go home.”

Bitty should say something about the expression. He should chirp Kent for forgetting that home is a few thousand miles in either direction—that the hotel room holds a lump sum of nearly nothing compared to Kent’s Stanley Cup rings or Bitty’s standing mixer, the painting from Lardo hanging in his little foyer—that there’s no Kit or even Senor Bun in the Hilton off Route 80.

Bitty smiles and says, “Okay,” because he’s not sure that Kent forgot a thing.

 

~*~

 

Bitty’s leg bounces the whole Uber ride home and Kent puts his hand on Bitty’s knee but doesn’t try to stop the motion, just traces slow circles with the pad of his thumb against the bone. In the elevator, Kent’s arm slips around Bitty’s waist and he moves in close, body trembling, lips brushing along the line of Bitty’s hair, and Bitty bites his lip and breathes hard around the tears springing into his closed eyes. He reaches blindly, finds the line of Kent’s arm and traces down to the elbow where his fingers linger, clinging.

The elevator opens onto their floor. The walk down the hallway is a blur, Bitty swaying on his feet while he waits for Kent to key open the door, and then they’re inside and Kent doesn’t jump him like he’s half expecting—doesn’t crowd him up against the door and sink teeth into his lip or latch onto his neck with pent-up hunger.

Kent drops his wallet to the ground at their feet and laughs breathlessly and brings his hands up to cradle Bitty’s face. He purses his lips and wets them with his tongue and says, “Hey, Bits,” through the kind of awed smile that makes Bitty want to burst.

Bitty moves forward and it’s easy—so easy, barely three inches of height and a tilt of the head—to kiss him. It’s better than in the club, better than when Kent’s dick was half-hard against Bitty’s ass and the sweat was tacky on their skin and the beat of Bitty’s heart matched the artificial bass leaking from a giant set of speakers.

Bitty’s heartbeat is the gentle scrape of Kent’s teeth against his lip, the reverent scratch of fingers through the side of his hair. He breathes in the soft gaps between kisses, the breaks that are more involuntary smiles and laughter than attempts to separate at all, and when Kent murmurs a warm, giddy, _“Fuck,”_ Bitty just giggles, falls down onto the bed so Kent will have to chase him.

Kent follows instantly, but there’s no desperation in it—nothing that makes this feel sharp or brutal—they’re the slow curl of toes in a patch of sunlight and forehead kisses while pancakes sizzle in a frying pan and Bitty is struck with the bubbling sense of nearly-déjà vu, the sense that things have been almost-this forever, like if he had peeled back the wallpaper he would have seen it.

It startles a laugh out of him, something that’s somehow both vindication and disbelief, and Kent pulls away to press his forehead to Bitty’s and ask, amused, “What?”

“Nothing,” Bitty whispers ruefully. “I just—I can’t remember when I fell in love with you—isn’t that weird? Shouldn’t I know?”

Kent’s breath hitches and he pretends that it doesn’t, like Bitty knew he would. His eyes are shining in the strange hotel lamplight and he looks like he’s won something, like he ripped the tips of his fingers raw to reach it and now it hurts to hold. He dips back down and says, “Doesn’t matter—we’re here,” into the seam of Bitty’s lips.

Bitty arches up this time, hands tightening in the back of Kent’s shirt, and wraps a leg around his waist to pull him in. It draws the heat out—a rush of arousal down his spine when Kent groans into Bitty’s mouth and grinds against him.

“I want—” Bitty gasps, throws his head back when Kent mouths at his neck. “Fuck, I wanna—I don’t—d’you have condoms?”

Kent pauses, considering. “Shit. I don’t even have lube.”

“Shit,” Bitty repeats, and they undergo a brief silent negotiation—Kent’s face pressed into Bitty’s neck and Bitty’s hand tracing a line down Kent’s back—that culminates in deciding, no, they’re not going to be those people who walk-of-shame to a drug store to scavenge for Trojans and KY at midnight.

Not when there are better options, anyway. Bitty says, “Wanna blow you, then,” and Kent nips at Bitty’s jaw in agreement before flopping over onto his back.

He pulls his shirt off while Bitty strips down to his underwear, and Bitty—it’s not like he’s never admired Kent’s body before, not like he’s never _touched_ it, even—he’s been the friend Kent took suit shopping, who hummed and squinted at a pair of slacks and decided, _‘your ass looked better in the first pair,’_ and he’s been the friend who got wine-drunk with him and assured him, _‘no, your abs are definitely nicer than Tyler Seguin’s, just_ look _at them!’_ in earnest.

So maybe that’s why he’s not nervous, sitting on his heels and dragging his eyes across the cut of Kent’s abs up to his face. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to breathe, “Lord, you’re somethin’ else, you know?” and not feel embarrassed by the rawness of it.

Kent laughs, sheepish and deflecting, “That’s not always a compliment, coming from you,” and holds out his arms for Bitty to crawl into.

Bitty sucks Kent’s bottom lip into his mouth and murmurs, “You’re all kinds of it.” He trails a hand down, shoulders flexing around the wrap of Kent’s arms, and works open the button on Kent’s jeans.

“I’ll take it,” Kent says, winking as he arches his hips so Bitty can tug his pants and boxers down his thighs, and then promptly loses all traces of being smug when Bitty wraps a hand around his dick. “F-fuck, Bits—”

“Yeah?” Bitty teases. Kent is hot under his palm, the slightest bit slick with precome, and fuck if Bitty doesn’t want to taste him desperately—wants to be filled up by the weight of him.

He slips down between Kent’s thighs, hand gripping at the base of Kent’s dick, watching his own thumb trace up the curve of it. And this—it’s a strange feeling, almost, for all the ways Bitty never imagined he’d be here. With anyone, at first—never having this at all. And then because Jack—well, Jack was supposed to be the vast lump sum of names and dicks on his lips, the perfect first try, and now—

“I love you too, you know,” Kent says, and Bitty swallows him down to bury the sob that tries to leap out of his throat.

Kent’s back arches and Bitty digs the fingers of his free hand into his hip because he knows Kent likes it that way—has been the secret-keeper for dozens of _‘I love it when’s_ and _‘fuck, last week I tried’s_ and now it feels like he’s been training for some secret test all along—and rakes his nails down to Kent’s kneecap to make him keen.

“Fuck—fuck, Bitty—I—” he whines, thrashing and fighting the thrashing with trembling muscles to keep from making Bitty gag. “I won’t—last, fuck, I—”

“My thighs,” Bitty gasps, pulling off with a sloppy pop. “My thighs, Kenny, fuck—”

Kent pants, “Fuck—yeah, yes, c’mere,” and yanks Bitty up to him for a kiss.

Bitty pulls off his boxer-briefs and Kent wiggles his pants the rest of the way off in a frantic twist of limbs, and they curl up on their sides with Kent slotted against Bitty’s back.

Kent’s cock is slippery with spit when he pushes between Bitty’s thighs, an arm wrapped around his chest with the same stabilizing possession from in the club, and it eases the friction just enough but if— _when,_ Bitty corrects feverishly, as Kent sighs with what could almost be relief against the shell of Bitty’s ear—when they do this again it’ll be better with real lube and—

“Fuck me, baby,” Bitty moans, breathless from the heat of Kent’s body along his back and the rough slide between his thighs and his lungs hurt from everything about this, about _them._ “C’mon, just like that.”

“Baby,” Kent echoes, a curse and a prayer and all the other things all at once. His arm flexes against Bitty’s chest and his other hand comes up to wrap around Bitty’s dick. “Baby, like this?”

Bitty pants, “W-wetter,” and Kent lifts his hand away and Bitty grabs it by the wrist to bring it to his mouth and laves his tongue against the palm to slick it. It’s sloppy and desperate and Bitty would be embarrassed by it, maybe, if Kent were someone else.

But Kent buries his face in the cord of muscle of Bitty’s neck and _whimpers_ and wraps his spit-soaked hand back around Bitty’s dick and comes.

“Fuck, fuck—Bitty, I—fuck,” he babbles, _Bitty_ and _fuck_ and _Bitty,_ nothing but _Bitty Bitty Bitty_ until his body stills and Bitty is fucking his hand to finish, spilling onto the sheets with a choked-out moan.

Kent rolls onto his back with a grunt and goes loose-limbed, a languid flopping of muscles that Bitty can’t copy without planting himself in a puddle of come.

“Ew,” Bitty grumbles, and Kent huffs out a laugh before swiping someone’s shirt between Bitty’s legs to clean the smears of come and drying spit.

“’S why twin beds’re great,” he says, which makes no sense until he rolls off the bed, tugging Bitty with him, and adds, “No sleeping in th’ wet spot.”

Bitty hums absentmindedly, still sort of fuzzy and come-drunk, and willingly goes when Kent pulls him down onto the other bed and wriggles them both under the covers.

Kent reaches over to switch off the light and resettles against the pillows, Bitty tucking himself against his chest. It’s quiet, the gentle sounds of evened-out breathing and anonymous city traffic outside the hotel forming the soft backdrop. The surrealism is starting to fade and little things start to drift back in—the way Kent’s chest hair tickles against Bitty’s nose, the nearly-silent drum of Kent’s fingers tapping with inexhaustible energy against the mattress—and it leaves Bitty with something sharp and urgent feeling in his stomach that he can’t explain.

“Hey,” he says. His eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark but he can feel the fondness of Kent’s gaze on him anyway. “I love you, you know.”

Kent hums happily, presses a kiss to Bitty’s temple. “I know, Bits. Me too.”

 

~*~

 

Bitty wakes up to a trail of kisses working their way up his jaw. His eyelids are heavy so he keeps them closed, but smiles and fumbles with a hand until he manages to work his fingers into Kent’s hair and cards through it gently, playing with the thick half-curls of it.

Kent noses against Bitty’s cheek and Bitty turns to kiss him, close-mouthed and sweet, smiling into it. Kent murmurs, “Morning, sunshine.”

“Mm,” Bitty hums, tugging lightly in Kent’s hair.

“Want first shower?”

Bitty stretches and twists, relishing the pull in his muscles. “Nah.”

“Trick question.” Kent nips at Bitty’s earlobe and scoops Bitty up into his arms. “Shower with me.”

Bitty kicks out with his feet until Kent puts him down and then leans up against him for support as they trudge into the bathroom anyway. “Fine,” he huffs, acting much more put-out than he actually is.

They brush their teeth while the water warms and then trade languid, minty kisses under the spray, Bitty’s arms around Kent’s neck and Kent’s hands on his hips pressing him back against the still-chilly tile. It’s a chaste thing, relatively speaking anyway, until Bitty nips at Kent’s bottom lip and hitches his morning wood up against Kent’s stomach.

They get each other off with hands and sweet nothings echoing off the tiles, and Bitty drapes boneless against Kent’s front while he lets Kent wash him—loving fingers working shampoo into his hair, soaping him with the sharp, lemongrass-scented hotel body wash.

Kent always indulges in long showers and Bitty prunes, so he leaves Kent to it and scrubs himself dry with a plush towel before flopping back onto the bed. He gets halfway through getting dressed—boxer-briefs and a t-shirt pulled over his head—before he thinks about checking his phone and does that instead. He’s got more unanswered texts from his friends and mother, and—

 **_Jack (7:02 am):_ ** _Hey_

Bitty worries at his bottom lip and checks the clock. It’s ten AM here, which means it’s either eleven or noon back in Providence—time zones are hard. Jack might not even be home.

 **_Bitty (10:13 am):_ ** _Um, hey :)_

Bitty drops his phone down to the bed and closes his eyes. It buzzes not even a minute later.

 **_Jack (10:13 am):_ ** _Sorry, I just saw your Twitter. And I wanted to see how you were doing, I guess._

 **_Jack (10:14 am):_ ** _Do you have time for a call?_

The water is still running in the bathroom. Kent is humming some Taylor Swift song. Bitty presses the call button and brings the phone up to his ear.

“Bittle? Hey.”

It’s been months. A third of a year. Bitty’s voice still wavers when he answers, “Hi, honey.”

“Are you—uh. You’re in Ohio?”

“Um, Illinois, technically,” Bitty corrects. “We crossed a couple borders last night, after—um, after that picture.”

“Right.” Jack is quiet for a moment. There’s no background noise, so he’s probably at home. At his home. “Are you—is everything okay? You didn’t—you didn’t tell me.”

Bitty means to laugh and makes a noise more like a sob instead. “Jack,” he asks, his voice sore and pained like he’s screamed and screamed for hours, “why would I?”

“Right,” Jack repeats, and Bitty can picture the furrow in his brow—the muddled confusion and frustration—and Bitty used to feel impossibly fond about that expression and it throbs like a phantom limb. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Bitty answers automatically.

Jack doesn’t respond.

Bitty sits up and curls his knees into his chest with an arm wrapped around them. The water shuts off and Kent is still singing, loud enough that Bitty can make out the words if he closes his eyes and concentrates.

Jack says, “I was going to marry you. I had a ring in our sock drawer.”

It’s not pain, exactly. Bitty doesn’t have a word for what it is.

“Me too,” he admits. A tear drips onto his knee and Kent comes out of the bathroom and freezes at the scene. “Mine was behind the flour in the pantry.”

Kent jerks his thumb towards the door in an offer to leave and Bitty shakes his head, pleading, hand stretched out in something weak and desperate.

“I kept thinking—” Jack cuts off, frustrated.

Kent crawls onto the bed, reclines against the pillows, and pulls Bitty between the vee of his legs.

“I kept thinking,” Jack repeats, “maybe it would’ve helped. Maybe we could’ve fixed it, if we’d—if I’d—”

“Maybe,” Bitty says. Maybe it would have suffocated them. He feels like he has rope burn around his throat and he’s not the one who decided any of this at all and he’s not sure what Jack wants him to say, what he _needs._

Kent presses his nose into Bitty’s hair.

Jack says, “Muffin misses you. She’s always laying in the kitchen, waiting for you to get there.”

Bitty laughs softly. “She likes to sleep in the kitchen ‘cause it’s warmest there, with the oven.”

“It’s not warm without you,” Jack blurts, too quiet and raw and earnest and Bitty curls up to brace his spine against the sob that shoots through it.

“Jack—”

“Sorry—sorry, I—” Jack cuts off and Bitty can picture perfectly the way he drags a hand over his face and sighs. “Sorry, I didn’t—you’re with Parse now, aren’t you? You’re together?”

Bitty leans back against Kent’s chest and tilts his head up to look at him. “We’re something, yeah.”

Kent’s smile is small and sad and he brushes his thumb across Bitty’s bottom lip.

“Does that bother you?” Bitty asks softly. He’s not sure what he wants to hear, if he wants permission or damnation or some other thing he can’t name but would know in his bones, if he heard it.

“I think it’s supposed to,” Jack answers carefully, slowly. “But it—I don’t know. You and him were always—even I could tell.”

Bitty’s stomach drops. “Jack—Jack, I never—”

“I know,” Jack soothes. “Bittle, that’s not what I—maybe I was jealous, but. I just wanted—”

Jack goes quiet and Bitty waits patiently, eyes closed and cheek pressed against Kent’s neck and tears smearing against the places their skin meets.

“I don’t know when I stopped being the man who ran across campus for you.”

Bitty squeezes his eyes tighter shut and whispers, through the impossible ache in his chest, “I don’t know when I stopped wanting you to be.”

Jack’s breathing changes and Bitty knows he must be crying too, scrubbing at his eyes and frowning at the damp skin of his hand when he pulls it away. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too, honey.” Bitty’s voice is thick, watery. “I’m so sorry.”

Jack says, “Sometimes it feels like I’m at your funeral and they forgot to bury you.”

Bitty swallows and tastes the scratch of blood and soil against the back of his throat. “I know.”

“You were it for me,” Jack says. “I don’t know what else there is.”

“I know,” Bitty repeats. He opens his eyes and looks down at the bed. Kent’s toes are still wrinkled from the shower. “I’m scared too.”

Jack doesn’t say anything for a moment. Muffin barks from somewhere in the apartment. “Where are you going?”

Bitty blinks rapidly while his brain catches up. “Um, Vegas. Maybe California, to see Chowder.”

“You should—I hope you visit him,” Jack says. “I hope he’s doing well.”

“Yeah, me too,” Bitty agrees. He worries at his bottom lip before adding, “You should call him. He’d love to hear from you.”

Jack’s voice is warmer, like he’s smiling a little. “I will.”

They sit in silence, Muffin still barking, Kent pulling Bitty impossibly closer and nuzzling against him with a jarring tenderness that makes Bitty feel like his skin is brittle, like it can crack and crumble until there’s nothing left to hold.

“I should let you go,” Jack says eventually, and Bitty knows he’s right and what he means but he still feels hysteric around his edges, like he should be fighting, fists swinging, for something he already conceded.

So all he says is, “Goodbye, Jack,” until the line clicks dead and he drops the phone and all the fight leaks out from the fissures in his joints and he whispers, “Shit.”

Kent breathes deep and slow against Bitty’s back and Bitty tries to match the pace, sucking air in through his nose. Kent lets him brood for a while, resolutely wrapped around him and unmoving, until at last he asks, “Hey, you okay?”

Bitty closes his eyes and clears his throat. “Yeah. I, um—that was just—it’s the first time we’ve talked since I moved out, you know? It’s…weird.”

“Yeah,” Kent agrees. He squeezes Bitty’s knee gently. “You okay to head out?”

Bitty doesn’t feel okay to do much of anything. He smiles and says, “Yeah, ‘course. Just lemme pack,” and extricates himself from Kent’s arms.

His clothes from last night are strewn everywhere; he gathers them in a bundle and stuffs them into his suitcase haphazardly, pausing to toss a clean pair of shorts onto the bed when he realizes he never finished getting dressed.

Kent is still in his towel and doesn’t seem to be in a hurry, for once. He’s watching Bitty in that careful way that seems nonchalant, when you don’t know him well enough. “So Jack knows?”

“Um, yeah.” Bitty’s pretty sure Kent couldn’t hear Jack’s side of the conversation. He’s grateful for that, even though he’s the one who made Kent stay.

Kent hums, reaches over to snag a stray sock and lob it into the suitcase. “How’d he take it?”

Bitty chews on his bottom lip. “Um. He was fine. It’s—we’ve moved on, you know?”

“Yeah.” Kent stands and sheds his towel while he fishes through his suitcase for something to wear. “It, like—it’s okay that it still sucks, you know? You guys had so much shit to figure out. You had, like, an actual life together.”

Sometimes when Bitty leaves the grocery store he drives for ten minutes before he realizes he’s headed to the wrong apartment, and he turns the car around and laughs even though there’s no one around to fool.

“It’s fine,” he says. He rips the crumpled heap of clothes out of his suitcase and starts to fold them one by one even though they’re dirty and he’ll wash them at the next hotel tonight anyway. His fingers shake and ruin the creases.

Kent ducks down to check under the bed for anything they’ve forgotten. “I still say we could get Muffin back. Dognap ‘er. Sue for joint doggy-custody. Weekends and Christmas and Jack gets Chanukah.”

His needling always turns flippant when he’s frustrated.

“I don’t want her,” Bitty says evenly, and shoves a shoddily folded tank top back into the suitcase so hard he jams his finger into the plastic ribbing and pain shoots all the way up his arm.

Kent pauses. He straightens from under the bed and cautiously presses, “I mean, I know shit like this is awkward but you know Jack’ll let you see her, right? You don’t gotta—”

“I don’t _want_ her, okay?” Bitty snaps shrilly, swallows, chokes on the tear-flooded tremble in his voice. “I mean—of course I love her but I don’t—she was always Jack’s goddamn dog, okay? She sat with me in the kitchen and waited for him to get home and he took her on runs and she helped him through panic attacks and I don’t—I don’t—I look at her and I think ‘Jack’ll be back soon’ and he _won’t_ and I’m fucking sorry I can’t _do it!”_

The mask of Kent’s face cleaves down the middle and flutters away and in its place is the shrapnel of every damn thing Bitty’s ever felt, like Kent’s done it before and he’ll bear it again in Bitty’s place, like he’s a stitched-up voodoo doll for Bitty to shove pins into and gnaw at the threads of the burlap skin.

“Bits,” he whispers, like people can do things besides break, and Bitty collapses into his arms and tries to shatter himself on the cut of Kent’s bones.

“I’m sorry,” Bitty sobs, hands clutched in the fabric of Kent’s shirt and whole body shaking. “I’m sorry—I can’t. I can’t do it.”

Kent’s hand is in Bitty’s hair and the other is on his back, keeping him pressed close. “Babe—baby, Bits—can’t do what?”

Bitty sobs harder and fights the urge to throw up and Kent repeats, slow and scared even if he’s trying not to be, “Baby, can’t do what?”

“Th-this, I—I don’t—” Bitty tries to look up at him and can’t manage it, re-buries his face against Kent’s neck to muffle the words. “I can’t be what you need me to.”

Kent’s hand stills in Bitty’s hair but he doesn’t pull it away. “You don’t know what I need.”

“I’m so scared, Kenny,” Bitty whispers anyway. “I’m so scared, I—what if this’s all there is? What if it always—if no one—” His voice cracks and he gulps and gives up and says, “I can’t make you into something I’ll lose.”

Kent’s breathing is still slow but not in the soothing way it was before. It’s calculated. Defensive. “You’re right, you can’t.”

Bitty does look up, then, eyes wide and not quite understanding, and opens his mouth to—

“You can’t lose me,” Kent swears, fierce and stubborn and with all the arrogance of a media soundbite.“I don’t know what the fuck this is or what we’re fucking doing, or—or if it’ll always be like it is now.”

Bitty is shaking. He tries to nod and tears spill down his cheeks.

“Maybe not, I guess. But I—maybe it burns out one day, and it’s not—it stops being about fucking and being in love with you—” Kent laughs, almost in disbelief, and wipes a tear from Bitty’s cheek even as another replaces it. “Christ, I’m so fucking in love with you. But even if it changes—you’ll always be my favorite person, Bits. There’s no box to shove that in—it doesn’t need one.”

There’s something folded up in Bitty’s stomach, complex and twitching and fighting to unfurl and he scrubs at his eyes so hard he sees stars instead of Kent’s face. He has no words and he pawned the ring to pay the security deposit on his shitty apartment and his whole life has been packing things into boxes to leave places he’d thought would be home.

There’s something about Kent that crumples in silences and he pulls Bitty back into him and begs, “I don’t know how to make you believe me.”

“I don’t either,” Bitty admits. His chest feels swollen, bloated like when they pull bodies out of rivers—like he could be stuck with a pin and burst. His voice is small and timid and brimming with the most courage he’s felt in maybe years. “Can you try anyway?”

Kent’s lungs swell and crash like the frothing of waves on a coast.

Bitty wants to be the kind of person who jumps—who leaps from the bluff and crashes into the water and comes up spluttering around the taste of salt and grinning and alive.

Kent promises, “Forever, if I gotta,” and Bitty sobs and kisses at Kent’s neck and sobs again, softer.

“I hope not,” he answers, which comes out wrong, like that, but Kent must know what he means because he presses his face into Bitty’s hair and agrees, “Me too.”

Kent walks backwards, sinking down onto the bed, and Bitty follows and straddles him, curled into his body and clinging to him to stay upright. Kent has an arm wrapped around Bitty’s hips to stabilize him and Bitty breathes against his neck until the brushes of his lips turn into kisses—sweet little needy things that make Kent whine high in his throat and tighten his hands in Bitty’s clothes.

“We’re gonna miss checkout at eleven,” Kent says. His hands drift to Bitty’s zipper.

Bitty sucks at the underside of Kent’s jaw and answers, “You can pay the extra day,” half begging and half statement of fact.

Kent shoves Bitty’s shorts down his thighs and dips down to press an open-mouthed kiss to Bitty’s stomach. “I’m literally not sure my dick can handle three orgasms in like ten hours.”

Bitty’s laugh cuts off in a breathy moan when Kent’s teeth hook into the waistband of his briefs. He works his fingers into Kent’s hair and tugs hard when he teases, “No one likes a quitter, honey.”

 

~*~

 

They drive head-on into a storm within the first hour of hitting the road—the menacing kind of thing with angry, splattering droplets and winds that make Gertrude the Prius shake in the lane and force Bitty to drop Kent’s hand and actually keep a solid grip on the wheel. They skip a few of the earlier stops Kent had planned in favor of outrunning the weather, especially because all of the attractions were outside.

Bitty chews on his lip absentmindedly, eyes flicking between watching the road and looking over at Kent, who seems subdued, brooding out the window while rain splatters the glass. It puts an uneasy twist in Bitty’s stomach, something almost shameful.

“Hey, um—” Bitty starts, pausing when Kent jumps slightly and turns to look at him. “I just, um—I wanted to tell you how, um—I know how hard our conversation this morning must have been? Like, for you to hear me say all that and still—and still be there for me and be supportive and everything, so I just—thank you. Thank you for that.”

Bitty watches the tension coil and shift in Kent’s shoulders. “What else was I gonna do?”

The question is half-rhetorical; Bitty answers it anyway, softly and with his eyes back on the road. “You could’ve gotten angry, or tried to push me into or out of something—you could’ve split on me.”

“I almost did,” Kent admits in a rush, deflating like the confession was jammed up between his bones. “I almost—when you were—I’m sorry.”

“Sweetheart, no.” Bitty reaches out, the car jerking at the sudden loss of a hand on the wheel, and grabs at Kent’s shoulder. “I’m so—I’m really proud of you, and I—it was hard, and it’s okay it was hard. And _I’m_ sorry, for pushing it there.”

Kent grimaces, turning his face away again, but grabs at Bitty’s hand and draws it into his lap. His thumb runs over the ridges of Bitty’s knuckles. “I just—it shouldn’t, like, be something you’re still _proud_ of me for, like fuck. I just—” He thumps his head against the window, hard enough that Bitty bites down on his lip in worry. “I should just be there for you.”

“Baby, you _are,_ oh my God,” Bitty insists, and he knows he sounds exasperated which isn’t his intention but—“You think I don’t know what this is? What this—what this all is? You—I can’t believe what you’ve done for me.”

Kent says, “It’s not enough,” and the car hydroplanes while he’s talking and Bitty has to fight to keep it on the road. Cars blare their horns and he barely hears them, just rips his hand out of Kent’s to grab at the wheel in a heart-pounding panic and when he stabilizes the car Kent is still staring at his empty, upturned palm.

“It’s not enough,” Kent says again, stubborn and aching like the swelling of water around the crack in a dam.

Bitty fights the flaring of his nostrils and the urge to throw up. He merges to the right and off the road onto the shoulder and throws the car in park with a shaking hand. The rain soaks him through in the ten seconds it takes to climb out of the car and back into it, into Kent’s lap, and Kent’s hands plaster to him when he clings to Bitty’s hips.

“Bitty—”

“You’re always enough,” Bitty whispers fiercely, face pressed into Kent’s hair and tears welling in his eyes. “You’re always, always enough and I’m so sorry, honey, for what I did to keep you from feeling that.”

“I can’t help you.” Kent’s face is buried in Bitty’s shoulder and the words reverberate in his collarbone, small and shaking twice-over. “You’re so fucking unhappy and I can’t do shit about it, fuck.”

Bitty feels, in the heady kind of way things sometimes bubble up into being, the very strange and very compelling urge to laugh. He does—a soft, broken sound.

“I guess I am, aren’t I? I’m miserable.” He laughs again and Kent’s hands tighten on his hips and he pulls his face away to brush his fingers across Kent’s cheek, look him in the eye. “I’m less miserable with you. Maybe—maybe that doesn’t feel like much, but—it does, to me. I love you and you’re enough.”

Kent doesn’t say anything, eyes a little wide and mouth set in an obstinate line.

Bitty cups his jaw. Kent leans into the touch and the beginnings of his stubble scratch against Bitty’s palm, and Bitty tells him, “I’m so thankful for you, but Kent, honey—you aren’t responsible for fixing me. You can’t put that on your shoulders.”

Kent snorts, rolls his eyes, and taps Bitty on the nose fondly. “Hey, pot.”

Bitty smiles and kisses Kent on his nose, then dips down for a peck on the lips too. “Hi, kettle,” he murmurs.

The deluge continues outside and Bitty shivers in his wet clothes. Kent reaches to the side and turns up the heat in the car and pulls Bitty closer, shifting the seat back so there’s room for Bitty to curl up sideways in his lap, Kent’s face nuzzling in his hair. He mutters, “You smell like the rain.”

“You like the rain.” Bitty closes his eyes and presses his cheek against Kent’s collarbone. They’ll have to get back on the road soon, probably, for any number of reasons. He makes no move to shift away.

“Yeah,” Kent agrees. He breathes deep, shakily, his hands tightening their grip like Bitty might tumble away. “I just—you were there for me for so—fucking much. I just—I wanna do the same for you. I don’t—I don’t know how.”

“Oh, honey—you _are,_ I promise.” Bitty traces his nose along the collar of Kent’s shirt, ends up at the curve of his neck. “Sometimes it—it feels like you’re the only one.”

Kent gives a heavy sigh, breath ghosting against Bitty’s temple. “Yeah, I know how that feels.”

Bitty has no answer to that and he’s not sure Kent expects one. He snuggles as close as he can manage, limbs jammed up in the seat and heart aching in time with his joints and damp clothes shriveling as they dry, and Kent whispers a _‘thank you,’_ into his hair he’s certain he wasn’t meant to hear.

Eventually, Bitty uncurls enough to stretch out his muscles and asks, “Where’re we going?”

Kent hums while he scrolls through their itinerary, then grins. “A giant fucking ball of stamps. Want me to drive?”

“A giant—of course,” Bitty mutters, because he really shouldn’t be surprised by Kent’s weird love affair with bizarre tourist attractions at this point, then answers louder, “Um, yeah, if you don’t mind? I’m kinda—tired, right now.”

“M’kay,” Kent agrees easily, planting a warm kiss on Bitty’s lips before fumbling to disentangle from him so he can get over to the driver’s side. He tries to just crawl over the center console and accomplishes nothing besides elbowing Bitty in the face and nearly toppling an entire uncapped bottle of Gatorade onto the floor before Bitty, trying to scold him for it and mostly just laughing too hard to succeed, pesters him out the door instead.

Kent bolts around the car and practically launches himself back into the car, shaking his hair out like a dog. Bitty laughs and shields his face from the onslaught of water droplets.

“You’re such a menace,” he teases, voice warm with affection, and Kent’s whole face lights up like it’s the best news he’s ever heard.

He leans across the car to kiss Bitty and corrects, “Your menace.”

Bitty laughs and nips at Kent’s bottom lip and ignores the twist in his stomach. “Yeah,” he chirps, “how’d that happen?”

Kent just winks and shifts the car back into drive.

 

~*~

 

Bitty stays awake through the drive to the ball of stamps, but he does fall asleep during the drive after that and—wakes up in Utah.

“Fishlake?” he mutters, rubbing his eyes and squinting at the National Forest sign they’ve parked near. They’ve succeeded in putting the rain behind them but the sky is cloudy still, brooding.

“Sort of,” Kent says, shutting off the engine and stretching in his seat. “We’re going south from here.”

Bitty hums and stretches too, working out the kink in his neck he gave himself while he slept. “Hiking?”

“Mostly flat ground I think? But it’ll be a coupla miles round trip,” Kent says, fussing at his hair in the rearview mirror before tucking it under a snapback.

“Okay.” Bitty kicks off his nice shoes and reaches behind him to grab his sneakers, squawking indignantly when Kent pinches his ass while he’s turned around. “Kent!”

“Sorry not sorry,” Kent says, smirking. “Your ass is too cute.”

Bitty ignores the pleased blush rising onto his cheeks. “Charmer.”

“Mm,” Kent agrees, and snags a water bottle before stepping outside.

Bitty grabs one too and follows him; they start down a trail that leads them into a forest with tall, strange trees. There are other people milling about, some heading in the same direction as them, but the path through the forest isn’t crowded and Kent’s hand slips into Bitty’s within minutes.

Bitty looks up at him, apprehensive, but Kent’s eyes are bright when they flick over and his smile is easy, content, and Bitty can’t bring himself to deny him anything that puts that expression on his face. They walk with fingers laced loosely, arms swinging, crunching through the underbrush. It feels startlingly normal—like they’ve slipped unnoticed into some parallel place where nothing hurts and there aren’t things to be afraid of—Kent isn’t famous and Bitty calls his mother every Sunday and heartache happens in romance movies before the happy ending.

“I wish we could live like this,” Bitty says, out of nowhere and too loud for their peaceful quiet.

Kent turns to press a kiss to Bitty’s temple, lips just barely brushing his hair, and doesn’t answer.

Bitty’s not sure how long they’ve been walking when the breeze picks up, but he startles when it does and the whole forest quivers—leaves rustle and whine and groan like a thing in mourning and Bitty swears it must be a trick of the dreary light that entire trunks dance with it.

“What the fuck?” Bitty whispers in a hiss, slips closer to Kent’s side and glares up at him when all he does is laugh.

“It’s called Pando—the Trembling Giant,” Kent says, smirking with amusement. The trees are still moaning and Bitty shivers, leans his head against Kent’s. “People say it’s technically all one tree—all the roots are the connected and shit—and it’s super old.”

Bitty tilts his head up to watch the breeze wrack through the leaves. “It sounds haunted.”

Kent is fiddling with a map on his phone. “It’s dying.”

The breeze fades out and the weeping sounds ripple away like aftershocks. Kent steers them down a path to the right and Bitty asks, “All of it?”

The trees thin to reveal a campground; a few tents have been set up but there’s no one around.

“Yeah, it’s—” The ground is damp from the rain that passed through but Kent sprawls out anyway, snapback set to the side and hands behind his head. Bitty joins him even though his skin crawls at the seep of water into his shorts. “They don’t know why? Like, parasites and stuff always kill the older parts off but apparently it’s not growing like it used to.”

Bitty looks around before tucking himself against Kent’s body, head resting on his chest. His bones feel heavy, melancholy. “That’s awful.”

Another breeze tickles at the leaves. Kent runs a hand through Bitty’s hair in a soothing rhythm. “They’re trying to save it, though. Like with science experiments and stuff. I just thought—I dunno, it felt like we should see it.”

Bitty closes his eyes and pictures the trees around them withering, rotting bark and shrunken stems and wailing leaves. The ground underneath them smells like pungent loam. He says, “I’m glad you showed me,” and then, “Sometimes I forget you’re a total nerd.”

Kent laughs. “Does that mean you want more tree facts? ‘Cause I got more tree facts.”

“Sure,” Bitty murmurs. His eyes are still closed and Kent’s fingers against his scalp are lulling him into a drowsy half-sleep. “Hit me with those tree facts, baby.”

“Pando’s crazy old. Like, maybe a million years old,” Kent says. His voice is warm and smooth over the words, something a little smug, maybe. Satisfied. “Some people say it’s the biggest living thing, but other people say it’s this fungus instead, depending how you define it. But like, since it’s so old it’s lived through way different climates and stuff than now.”

Bitty hums and nuzzles against Kent’s shirt, urging him to continue. The trees are still whispering and moaning around them and Bitty wonders what it would be like here at night. He thinks about ghosts and creaking floorboards and Ransom saying music played from the attic no one else could hear.

“So that might be why it’s not growing well anymore—‘cause it’s just chilling in the fucking 21st century doing its best, you know?” Kent chuckles and his fingers brush against the shell of Bitty’s ear. “But also, it survived so long ‘cause of all these forest fires that burned down the other trees. The aspens—that’s what Pando is—would die too but the roots sprouted new trees in the ash, like, growing from all the nutrients in the dead trees. And they grew so much it outpaced the fires.”

“But,” Kent continues, “there aren’t enough fires anymore? And it’s fucking with the trees ‘cause if nothing burns, nothing new grows in big bursts like it did before. I dunno, it’s like—if we don’t let part of it die the whole thing’s gonna go?”

“That’s fucked up,” Bitty mutters.

Kent squeezes Bitty’s shoulder and then brings his hand back up to his hair. “I feel like there’s a metaphor for life in there somewhere, but I’m too lazy to make it.”

“Mm,” Bitty agrees.

Kent starts to tease, “Gonna fall asleep on—” but the sound of voices drifts through the trees and Bitty automatically rolls away onto his back, tension coiling into his body.

An older couple with two children wander into the campsite, carrying what looks like supplies for a picnic—including a blanket to sit on, which Bitty is immediately envious of.

“Hello!” the woman greets pleasantly, apparently unconcerned by the possibility they’re intruding.

Bitty pushes up onto his forearms and stands, then holds out a hand to help Kent to his feet. “Oh, hi there!”

Kent squeezes Bitty’s hand before he pulls away. “Hey,” he greets, fitting his snapback onto his head, “nice evening, yeah?”

The family’s faces are blank and friendly, absent of recognition. They make small talk about the weather while they spread out their picnic blanket and Kent’s arm wraps around Bitty’s shoulders with ambiguous affection—the kind of thing that Bitty’s fine with being mistaken for companionable.

Bitty and Kent have no interest in lingering, though, and make excuses to continue their hike. Kent’s arm stays where it is but Bitty slips his hand onto Kent’s hip and leans into his space, not spooked enough from the encounter to give up the comfort. The trees tremble and whine around them and Bitty brushes his fingers across the trunks the whole walk back.

When the treeline breaks and they catch sight of their car in the distance, Bitty caresses a final trunk and whispers, “Bye, Pando. Good luck.”

Kent’s eyes are soft in the fading light, filled with something so blatantly loving it nearly brings Bitty to tears. “Let’s get to the hotel and then grab dinner, yeah?”

Bitty looks behind him at the broad stretch of ancient forest, the shimmering leaves and bright, strange trunks. There’s something rattling half-loose in his heart and he doesn’t know if it’s meant to be stitched back into place or torn free. “Yeah,” he agrees, “sounds perfect.”

 

~*~

 

Bitty drives for a few hours before they pull up at a hotel and rent their room—still with double beds, for appearances—and then climb back in the car to search for dinner because there’s nothing in walking distance. Dinner stays lighthearted and apparently people care about hockey in Utah, because Kent gets recognized. He signs autographs graciously and flashes a charming smirk for cameras and introduces Bitty as _‘this is Eric’_ with absolutely no descriptors at all.

They duck into a convenience store on their way back from dinner and bicker over the condom selection, Kent teasing and Bitty swatting at him in a huff, and when no one’s looking Kent leans in and plies Bitty with a kiss, slow and filthy, and throws the box he wanted into the cart while Bitty’s distracted and—

In moments like this, Kent’s hands on his hips and delighted snicker in his ear, it’s easy to forget that this might not be forever—to forget that maybe this collection of moments is finite, that he’s spending them the way he used to slide quarters into gumball machines at the grocery store, that all he’s doing is adding to his menagerie of ghosts.

He forgets, for a little while, with his hand teasing circles onto Kent’s thigh on the drive home. Then they keep their hands off each other until they’re back in the hotel room and Kent cups Bitty’s face in his hands again, like he plans to spend forever doing it over and over and Bitty’s inclined to let him, if he can, and the kiss is languid with soft sighs and trembling fingers.

Bitty plucks the snapback off Kent’s head to play with his hair, carding his fingers through it gently, and mumbles, “Wanna ride you.”

“Fuck yeah,” Kent breathes, hands already down at Bitty’s shorts. “God, Bits.”

They tumble down onto the bed and shed their clothes, a strange mixture of frantic and unhurried, quick fingers and slow tongues and barely a flash before Kent is grabbing at the lube and pressing a finger inside Bitty. It feels—it’s been so long and Kent knows that, works him open like he’s something delicate and freshly-constructed with too-new gears that could slide out of place, and—

Bitty hates that it’s what he needs. He wants Kent to be three fingers deep and fucking him with them, wants to be trying all the things they used to gossip about after a few glasses of wine, Kent on his back on the floor running his hand through the carpet and Bitty upside down on the couch with his head dangling near Kent’s face.

He wants to see what Kent looks like in subspace—wants to find what combination of words and nails and teeth will put him there—because Bitty’s always _wondered_ and he’s sure, now, that Kent has too and they could, except—

Except he’s not sure it’s been this gentle since he was twenty years old and Jack was whispering French in his ear for the first time and he still feels torn open and raw, like nothing could ever fill all the aching spaces in his soul.

Except when Kent grips his condom-covered dick to help Bitty slide down onto it—it feels like coming home. Like years and years of tumbling through the world collecting bruises and if things could be perfect they would be like this—Kent inside him with gentle hands on his hips and eyes looking up at him in wonder, like he can’t believe this is something he gets to have, and Bitty smiling so hard it hurts and hurts until he comes.

Things aren’t perfect and they go like this—Kent’s hands and Kent’s eyes and Bitty wears the tenderness like a brand charred onto his throat because it’s been years and years of hurting and it’s more like all of his bones resetting at once—the sudden shock of pain of a dislocated shoulder being jammed back into the gaping socket—and Bitty doesn’t even notice he’s crying until Kent’s hand comes up to his cheek.

“Bits?” he asks, eyes wide and hips stilled underneath him.

Bitty swallows and his throat burns when he sobs, _“Kenny,”_ and then, “Don’t stop, don’t—please,” and Kent shakes his head but he listens, rolls them over so Bitty is cradled underneath him and pushes back inside slowly, muscles trembling and face pressed into Bitty’s neck so close it must be hard to breathe.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Kent begs, breath hot on Bitty’s skin and hips rolling slow and torturous—like he’d stop moving entirely if he could but doesn’t know how. “What’s wrong—what’d I do?”

“I love you,” Bitty whispers. “Fuck me harder.”

Kent makes a sound Bitty can’t describe—a low whine or a breathless sob or something in the shape of Bitty’s name—and his face is wet against Bitty’s neck. His thrusts turn into snaps of his hips that punch little moans out of Bitty’s throat and he’s muffling words against Bitty’s skin that he can’t understand, things Bitty thinks could drown him if he listened closer, and Bitty writhes against the pleasure and the ache of his heart like he could turn one into the other and at least he’d know how to feel.

Bitty repeats, “I love you,” and Kent says, “I’m sorry—I’m so fucking sorry,” and Bitty wants to ask what for but he can’t—his tongue is burned raw and he wraps a hand around his dick and comes so hard he gasps and twists and fumbles to pull Kent into a kiss that feels like it used to feel to pray.

Kent’s hips stutter and twitch when he comes and Bitty presses little kisses into his hair and holds him as close as he can manage—clinging to him with his legs still wrapped around him and Kent still half-inside him—and it feels like if they tried to move they’d rip away each other’s skin.

“Don’t be sorry,” Bitty pleads. “Please, don’t—I’m not.”

Kent is panting, laboring for breath, his face pressed down into the pillow so he’s not looking at Bitty at all. “D’you want him back?”

Bitty’s stomach drops. His come is smeared between their bellies and he can feel it drying and he remembers what it sounded like when Jack would roll off of him and stumble into the bathroom to get a washcloth. He can hear the sound of heavy feet if he closes his eyes.

“Honestly?” Bitty asks, half a question and half a reminder, and Kent is too boneless from his orgasm to really go tense but he shifts against Bitty like he’s trying to pry himself away and can’t manage it. Bitty closes his eyes and focuses on the tremor in his lungs and admits, “I don’t know.”  

Kent is quiet, processing maybe, and Bitty continues, “I know I want you—so much I’m—so much I’m so scared, and it hurts.” He keeps his eyes fixed on the ceiling but reaches down to help Kent slide out of him, careful to keep the condom from spilling now that it’s loose around Kent’s softening dick. He ties it off and drops it into the trashcan at the side of the bed, then wraps his arms back around Kent’s back.

“Don’t wanna hurt you,” Kent mumbles.

“It hurts anyway,” Bitty says. He wipes his hand on the bedspread before bringing it up to Kent’s hair and stroking. “This hurts better. This—you make me—this hurts like I’m alive.”

“He’d take you back.” Kent’s voice is flat, stubborn, like it gets when he’s not really listening, just forcing words out. “I know he would—you know it. Why’re you here?”

Bitty laughs wetly, surprised by how easy the answer comes. “Because—you asked me to be. Because you love me and you hauled us across the country in a fucking Prius, of all things, because you thought it might help. Because—”

 _Because where else would I be?_ Bitty thinks, doesn’t say because he’s not sure it would help even if it’s true and—there are other places to be but none like this.

Kent rolls onto his side and stares at Bitty’s chest, traces his finger in circles across the skin. He says, “Don’t hate on Gertrude. She’s trying her best.”

Bitty smiles softly. “We all are.”

Kent looks up sharply, like it’s a thought he hadn’t considered before—that they’re all trying. His eyes are wide and soft and his freckles multiply on his face all the time, and Bitty wants to count them every night.

“Yeah,” Kent agrees quietly. “Yeah, we are.”

Bitty runs a hand along Kent’s arm, then lightly asks, “Can ‘trying our best’ maybe include a shower? I’m a mess.” He gestures down at himself vaguely—the come on his stomach, the smear of lube between his  thighs.

Kent laughs and nuzzles at Bitty’s cheek. “Sure thing, babe.”

They push out of bed and amble into the bathroom. Bitty leans over to switch on the water and Kent wraps around him from behind to murmur in his ear, “Can I wash you?”

Bitty hums, chirping, “I _guess,”_ like warmth doesn’t bloom through him at the thought.

“You’re a little shit, you know that?” Kent says, eyes crinkling around a smile, and shoves Bitty into the walk-in under the spray.

“Your little shit,” Bitty corrects, hands braced against the tile behind him, just to see the way Kent practically glows from it.

Kent cups a hand around the back of Bitty’s head and pulls him into a kiss, nothing but gentle lips. He breaks away to grab the shampoo and massage some into Bitty’s hair, fingers slow and nearly careful as they scratch against Bitty’s scalp.

They don’t speak for a while, Bitty drowsing while Kent pampers him, until Kent quietly says, “I know you still love him. It’s okay.”

Bitty’s breath catches and he keeps his forehead pressed against Kent’s shoulder so he doesn’t have to look at him. “I love you.”

“Like those are mutually exclusive,” Kent points out sarcastically, not unkindly, just—like there’s something he’s toeing around, kicking up dust for.

“I know they’re not.” Bitty sighs, exasperated. “I wish you’d just—say what you want me to do about it.”

“I want—” Kent starts, but cuts off in frustration. He hates being blunt—acts like it’ll pull a muscle—a feeling Bitty knows perfectly well. “I want—I think you should talk to Jack. Like, _really_ talk, not just whine about how sad life is now.”

Bitty rolls his eyes, but—it’s not like there’s anything to contradict.

“And I think—I think you gave up on him because it was easy and you regret it, and you’ve gotta fucking fight for it now or you’ll regret that too.” Kent’s voice is shaky but not—nothing hesitant. Determined and scared, knuckles up. “And I can’t fucking sit here and say I love you and pretend I don’t know that.”

The water is falling on Bitty’s back but he doesn’t really feel it, barely hears the sound of it running at all. He feels the press of Kent’s shoulder against his skin and the gentle draping of Kent’s arms around him—the way you hold an animal you’re afraid will bolt. He pleads, “I can’t—you know I can’t lose you. I can’t—how do I choose that?”

“What if—what if you don’t have to?” Kent asks, with practiced calm, like he’s rehearsed it in his head. He probably has.

Bitty tries to lift his head and it’s like there’s a magnet between his eyes, keeping him pressed up against Kent. He breathes and pulls and finally manages to look at Kent directly. “What’re you—what?”

Kent brings a hand up and brushes his fingers across Bitty’s temple. He’s pruning in the water and the sensation of wrinkled skin makes Bitty shiver. “What if you just—if Jack wants—what if we just…stayed the way we are? I don’t—partners, boyfriends—whatever this is right now, maybe it’s okay—to have this too.”

Bitty knows there’s a word for what Kent’s describing, words for what it would all be like—but he isn’t worried about those right now. He bites at his bottom lip and asks, “What if Jack…doesn’t want that?”

Kent’s eyes droop a little and Bitty—he wants to brush his fingers across Kent’s eyelids, trace a path along the freckles on his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose, through the whorls of his wild hair—like he’ll need to remember it before it washes away, because—

“Then—you choose, I guess,” Kent says plainly, like his chin isn’t up, throat isn’t bared. “And when you choose Jack, I—we’ll be like we were. I told you—it’s not about putting this in a box.” He pauses, the twist of his lips too melancholy to be a smile, the tone of his voice too soft. “I just love you.”

“I don’t know if I can do it,” Bitty whispers, his eyes blurring with tears and steam from the shower. He shifts forward and Kent pulls him into a proper embrace immediately—hand in his hair and arm steady across his back and lips against his ear. “I don’t—I don’t feel like I can do anything.”

“I know,” Kent murmurs. “I know, just—just breathe, babe. One thing at a time, okay?”

Bitty breathes and the steam condenses in his lungs and he used to wonder if he could drown like this but he can’t. Kent buoys him. “Okay,” he says, maybe a long time later. “Okay, I—I’ll think about it. Right now I just—I want to sleep and I need you to hold me?”

It feels so small in the grand scheme of things and so much like everything all at once, somehow, when Kent agrees, “Yeah, of course,” and shuts off the water immediately. Bitty can’t even remember if Kent washed his own hair.

They dry off and curl up in the bed they didn’t fuck in. The sheets are too cool against Bitty’s skin and he shrinks back against Kent’s chest, presses close against every inch of warm skin he can manage, and Kent nuzzles against him with more affection than Bitty can ever remember deserving. He shudders around a sob that tries to work out of his throat and whispers, “Thank you,” into the dark.

Kent doesn’t answer except by pulling Bitty even closer.

 

~*~

 

Bitty wakes up first.

Kent is snoring gently next to him—they tend to roll apart in the night—with his mouth just barely hung open and hair flopping down into his face, and Bitty rolls over to cling to him, face pressed into his chest. Kent stirs slightly and an arm wraps around Bitty’s waist, but doesn’t seem to wake up.

Everything hurts when he tries to start his brain up—ungreased gears squealing and creaking and putting a thick coating of bile around his stomach lining. His heart aches just thinking about Jack, about all the ways things withered and bled out and left them scrabbling with weak fingers at the shreds of a thing they could no longer name, had no frame of reference for.

And it’s—more than the pain of it, the grief. It’s a kind of terror, in ways beyond what he’s even tried to express—the fear that reconciliation would be a kind of botched resurrection—that they could blister their hands and scrape their lungs raw with the digging and stitch back together scraps of skin and tie threads between the bones and find themselves with a Frankenstein’s monster of a love, a strange gaping-mawed horror that does nothing but die harder.

It makes his chest tight and the way to kill a zombie is a bullet in the brain and his hands shake too much for that kind of thing.

But maybe—

Kent rolls onto his belly and takes Bitty with him, comfortably crushed under his warm weight, and Bitty thinks—

Maybe it’s not the religious defiance of a revival but a new birth—the stubbornness of seeds under ash-fed loam and thick rain growing up, up into the sun. The sacrifice of razed wood and hands dried and cracked by soil and death before life and maybe—

It could be like those things and sometimes seedlings fail but there’s a quiet violence in the shearing of poor stems—the deftness of his mother’s hands in the Georgia sun and soft spray of a spout of water onto the things that survive.

There are always things that survive—quivering and strange and wonderful.

Bitty tilts his head to look at Kent, his lips still parted and face soft in the morning light, and brushes his knuckles against Kent’s cheek. “What’d I do to deserve you?” he whispers, voice filled with a quiet awe.

Kent’s carefully constructed gape slips into a smirk and his eyes slip open. “’S that rhetorical, or d’you wanna list?”

“Faker,” Bitty accuses. His grin is delighted. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” Kent murmurs, nuzzling his nose into Bitty’s hair, then grabs at his phone on the nightstand. “’S early. Wanna go back to sleep?”

“Not yet,” Bitty says, and his stomach drops out from under him and he worries at his lip and explains, before he can change his mind, “I’m gonna—I think I’m gonna do it.”

Kent pushes up onto an arm, suddenly more awake, and asks, “Yeah?”

“Lord.” Bitty closes his eyes and takes a shaky breath. “Yeah.”

Kent smiles, soft and encouraging and less pained than Bitty realizes he was expecting, and grabs Bitty’s phone for him. “Go for it, babe.”

Bitty nods, fights desperately to cling to the certainty he feels, hovers over the keys. He types and deletes and retypes maybe half a dozen times before he settles on:

 **_Bitty (9:12 am):_ ** _Hi, honey. I was hoping maybe you would wanna talk again later today? Maybe about us and...some things we could fix. I just miss you. I miss you all the time._

Bitty hits send and focuses on his breathing. He knows Jack will be awake—that he’s getting ready for his run and he listens to music on his phone so he’ll have it on him. He doesn’t know if Jack will answer. It takes him three minutes to find out.

 **_Jack (9:15 am):_ ** _I don’t understand._

Bitty bites at his lip.

 **_Bitty (9:15 am):_ ** _I guess…I’m saying I want to try again. Or…*try* to try to, at least. I don’t wanna be without you. I still love you, Jack_

 **_Jack (9:17 am):_ ** _What about Kent?_

Bitty wipes at the tears springing into his eyes and turns his head, finds Kent stalling on Twitter—giving Bitty space—and Bitty feels a swell of warmth, the kind of aching affection that makes his bones feel pained and fluid and unbreakable.

 **_Bitty (9:18 am):_ ** _That’s part of why we need to talk_

There’s another break in Jack’s texts, longer this time, and Bitty worries at his lip some more until finally his phone buzzes again.

 **_Jack (9:23 am):_ ** _I need time to think about it._

 **_Jack (9:23 am):_ ** _I’m sorry._

Bitty exhales with—something—not quite relief but not pain, either. He breathes out because he has to, and turns again and brushes his fingers along Kent’s forearm to pull his attention.

Kent looks up immediately and drops his phone, replaces it with Bitty’s hands in his own, cradled around the phone Bitty can’t manage to put down. “We’ll figure it out,” Kent says, even though Bitty hasn’t explained anything at all yet. “I promise.”

Bitty smiles shakily, but he answers, “I know,” and even means it. He looks down at his phone to respond to Jack—telling him to take all the time he needs—and then sets it back on the nightstand.

“We could sleep more,” Kent offers, scooting closer and pulling Bitty against him. “Just—stay here and cuddle a while.”

Bitty’s fingers twitch and Kent’s skin is warm and bare against his own and it’s strange, how easy it almost feels. “Nah,” he says. “Come shower with me.”

 

~*~

 

Bitty drives to keep from losing his mind. As it is, he weaves through highway traffic and taps his fingers on the steering wheel with one hand because the other is holding Kent’s. His palms have turned clammy from sweat but Kent doesn’t seem to care, just runs a thumb over Bitty’s knuckles and plays on his phone with his free hand.

“You know—no offense—all things considered, I’m kinda surprised you’re not freaking out more,” Kent observes wryly, then gently squeezes Bitty’s hand.

Bitty laughs with only the slightest of frantic edges. “Me too? I guess—I mean, I’m still a wreck, but—at least I’ll know I tried, you know? I’ll have tried.”

“Yeah,” Kent agrees. He’s quiet for a minute, then says, “I’m proud of you, you know.”

Bitty’s throat goes tight. “I—thanks.” He sniffs, lets go of Kent’s hand to wipe at the sudden wetness in his eyes, reaches his hand back out for Kent to take. “You were—you’re wrong about something, though.”

Kent snorts, looks over with crinkles around his eyes. They’re green today, Bitty’s favorite, under thick lashes that make Bitty’s breath catch when they flutter. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” Bitty swallows and licks at his lips and says, “You said I’d choose Jack if I had to. You’re—you’re wrong. I pick you.”

Kent’s jaw clenches. He turns his head away to hide the tremble in his lip Bitty sees anyway. “Don’t say that when you don’t fucking mean it. Don’t fucking do that to me.”

“I’m not,” Bitty insists softly. “I wouldn’t. I pick you.”

“Bitty—”

“I agree with you, what you said about not putting love in boxes,” Bitty continues, and it’s his thumb tracing soothing circles against Kent’s hand now, his palm squeezing tighter in comfort. “I don’t think—I don’t think we need to. I want—I wanna just love you, and love him, the exact way it feels. And maybe Jack—maybe he won’t want that, and that’s okay—I won’t make him. But if he doesn’t—it’s you, Kenny. I—fuck, it’s you.”

Kent sighs, long and shaky and disbelieving. “Fuck.”

“I’m still terrified,” Bitty admits. “I’m so—I’m so scared that it won’t—that we can’t—that we’ll make the same mistakes or different ones that end up the same, but. You make—you make me wanna believe we can do it, honey. That we’ll—we can be okay, if it goes wrong, and—”

“Pull over,” Kent begs, sudden and desperate and looking at Bitty with wet wide eyes. Bitty hesitates and Kent unbuckles his fucking seatbelt and repeats, “Fucking pull the fuck over, Bits, please,” and Bitty drops speed and makes his way over to the shoulder and Kent is on him before the car even comes to a stop.

Kent pushes Bitty up against the window, hand behind his head to keep it from hitting the glass, and kisses him and kisses him and Bitty uses his last shred of sense to force the gear shift into park before his hands tangle in Kent’s hair and his foot slips off the brake.

Kent is crying and kissing Bitty and breathing in half-sobs—and it should feel broken and sharp and it should hurt and it doesn’t—hurts less than anything to let Kent bruise up his lips and dig fingers into his hip from how hard he clings to it. It’s broad daylight and Kent is stretched awkwardly across the center console of a fucking Prius to kiss him with tears streaming into the seam between their mouths, and Bitty feels alive enough to die in it.

“Bits,” Kent murmurs, the barest ghost of a word. “Bitty.”

Bitty runs his fingers through Kent’s hair, scratching against the scalp the way Kent likes. “Kenny.”

One of Kent’s shins is jammed against the console and his other leg is hooked forward awkwardly, no good place for it to go, and his muscles are trembling from the way he’s holding himself up to keep from toppling. He laughs self-deprecatingly, like the rush has faded away and he’s just now realized where he is. “Fuck, sorry, this is—shit.”

Bitty laughs too, exasperated and fond. “You ridiculous man.”

“Yours?” Kent asks. He hasn’t moved an inch and his words tickle against Bitty’s lips.

Bitty drags his thumb down across Kent’s kiss-bitten mouth. “Mine.”

Kent steals another kiss, apologies forgotten, soft and needy and grateful. He’s all sighs and faint flicks of tongue and aching things Bitty feels stretching between them like taffy. When he pulls away, he cups Bitty’s cheek and says, “Hey—however it is, it’s us. I promise.”

Bitty’s lungs hurt. He smiles, trails his fingers through the growing stubble on Kent’s jaw. “I promise too.”

 

~*~

 

The first and only stop of the day is the Grand Canyon. Bitty pulls up to it with wide eyes, staring out towards the horizon and idling the car in the parking lot without shutting off the engine.

“You had to know we were coming here,” Kent chirps, and Bitty turns to him and sticks out his tongue.

“That doesn’t mean I’m not _appreciative,_ Mr. Parson,” he huffs, smiling. He turns off the car and then cuffs the snapback off Kent’s head. “Have you been here before?”

“Rookie year,” Kent answers brusquely, and tucks his hair back into his snapback. “This time’ll be better.”

Bitty recognizes the tone and knows not to pry, just squeezes Kent’s wrist before climbing out of the car and opening the rear doors. “How much are we bringing?”

“Uh, couple options,” Kent says, joining Bitty in rifling through bags. “If we wanna do the whole hike it’s an overnight thing—we could bring sleeping bags and shit—or we could just do part of it and get back, like, right after nightfall.”

Bitty bites his lip. “Um, I think my phone would die, and—”

“Day hike it is,” Kent agrees cheerfully. He throws water bottles and energy bars into a backpack that he tosses to Bitty, then repeats the process with his own bag. “Still gonna be pretty long, though.”

“That’s okay.” Bitty smiles at Kent from across the car. “I’m excited, hun.”

“Yeah, me too.” Kent returns Bitty’s smile and then closes the car door, shouldering his backpack.

Bitty follows him, pausing to lock the car, and they start up the trail at a casual pace that gives Bitty time to appreciate the grandeur of the Canyon. There’s more vegetation than he’d expected—sprouting stubbornly around the cliff faces as they wind their way down towards the bottom, barely shifting in the face of the breeze tickling against Bitty’s neck—and more people, too. Families and couples and groups of friends scattered along the trail, some far off in the distance below them, others close enough that Bitty can catch snippets of their conversations if he eavesdrops.

They won’t make it to the bottom, Kent explains—pausing with his hand lightly resting on the small of Bitty’s back to take some pictures from where they are—but there are nice vantage points they can reach to get a view of the river down below. Bitty reminds Kent to hydrate and watches him wipe the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and itches and itches with the urge to touch him.

Kent would let him. Kent is probably daring him to, with his cocky smirk and sparkling soft eyes and the press of his fingers into either side of Bitty’s spine. But Bitty can hear the group behind them arguing about basketball stats and the couple that just passed them is gossiping about someone’s sister’s boyfriend and Bitty’s never quite had the nerve, like this.

They make some small talk while they hike, about music and Kent’s teammates and whether or not Kit could get along with another cat. Mostly, though, Bitty is watching the terrain change and shift around them as they descend, watching the river wind in and out of sight, watching Kent. He’s grinning, animated, soft voice dancing animatedly over a story that comes out between puffs of breath, pink cheeked and a little sweaty with exertion. He hasn’t been shaving and his stubble is coming in thick enough to be visible, when the light catches it. Bitty will feel it between his thighs, tonight.

“You’re quiet,” Kent murmurs. They’re lingering alone at a lookout point, sitting cross-legged on the ground and peering down the canyon below them. The river is a kind of green in the setting sun, like Kent’s eyes when he laughs.

“Mm,” Bitty hums. He leans his head against Kent’s shoulder and smiles at the fingers that brush against his hip. “Just thinking.”

Kent chuckles. “Yeah?”

“I never thought I’d be here,” Bitty explains, lifting a hand to gesture vaguely around him. His arm feels heavy, laden with sunlight. “I’m glad it’s with you.”

Kent answers with his lips in Bitty’s hair. “Me too.”

They pull apart when Bitty hears footsteps approaching, and young women’s voices. He’s about to suggest they keep hiking when Kent asks him, “Hey, your phone still alive?”

“Um, yeah?” Bitty hands it over when Kent asks for it, eyebrows furrowed.

Kent jogs over to the trio of women coming up the trail and flashes a smile. “Hey, could you guys do us a favor? Could you like, take some pictures of us?”

“Yeah, sure,” one of them agrees, not even batting an eye—Bitty takes a moment to appreciate that Kent won’t have to sign anyone’s water bottle. Kent unlocks Bitty’s phone for her and then comes back over to Bitty to pose.

And it goes like this: Bitty shifts to put his arm around Kent and Kent cups Bitty’s face in his hands and Bitty whispers, _“Kent?”_ in confusion and Kent drinks the name from Bitty’s lips. It’s soft and sweet—so tender Bitty thinks he hears the faint sound of one of the women gasping—and when Kent breaks the kiss he presses their foreheads together instead.

“Hey,” Kent says. He’s smiling. Bitty thinks he might be gaping, a little. “I love you.”

Bitty reaches his hand up and trails fingers across Kent’s cheek. “I love you too, you fool.”

Kent kisses Bitty once more, for good measure apparently, and then goes to retrieve the phone. “Thanks,” he cheerfully tells the woman, who looks a little caught off guard. “Shit, these look great. Want me to take some of y’all?”

Kent plays photographer for a while, taking pictures of the women in various combinations and poses, while Bitty watches contently. He’s still dazed, feeling his heart rate settle back inside his chest—fairly certain Kent hasn’t been recognized but nervous—giddy from kisses and the way _love_ always sounds on Kent’s lips.

They say goodbye to the other group and, wary of night approaching, decide to hike back to the car. Kent is quieter now too, vibrancy subdued but no less warm against Bitty’s side. He slips an arm around Bitty’s shoulders or takes his hand in his own when their part of the trail is empty, shares smiles and bright things in his eyes. It’s peaceful and the chill creeping into the air is welcome, after the long hike in the heat, and Bitty can feel freckles sprouting on his shoulders from the sun.

The stars are out by the time they reach the car. Kent volunteers to drive and Bitty curls up in the passenger seat with his phone plugged in to charge.

“We could make it to Vegas tonight, if we wanted,” Kent says, licking his lips in concentration as he pulls out onto the highway. “Like, four, maybe five more hours on the road.”

Bitty traces his thumb along the smooth edge of his phone case. “You’re not too tired?”

“Prob’ly not,” Kent says. He reaches—fumbles, really—for a Gatorade bottle; Bitty rolls his eyes and grabs it for him, twisting the cap off. Kent chugs half of it, hands it back to Bitty, swipes a hand over his mouth. “I’ll get coffee with dinner.”

There’s something—a tangled thing in Bitty’s stomach, pieces of melancholy and thrill and deep-seated ache—that makes the words harder. “I guess—this is it, then? The last night?”

Kent hums sympathetically, easy understanding wrapped up in no words at all. “I mean, we could head out to California after the kids camp. But—yeah.”

Bitty watches the Canyon blur away from them into the night, streaks of orange rock that look scorched in the moonlight. He can see his face in the reflection of the window, watches the way his lips move when he asks, “Can you take the long way?”

Kent takes Bitty’s hand and traces a thumb across his knuckles.

 

~*~

 

There are four new pictures on Bitty’s phone.

The first one was taken too early—Bitty’s hand is on Kent’s hip but Kent is turned awkwardly, mid-motion, because the woman clearly wasn’t expecting him to move at all—and it’s almost funny, from the expression on Bitty’s face. His eyebrows are high on his face and his arm is halfway extended, like he’d been trying to cover the hand reaching for his cheek with his own—or maybe move it away. Kent is smirking, mischievous.

The second and third are of the kiss. They’re backlit by the sunset and the sky is strange and bleeding behind them and they look like lovers in a way Bitty had forgotten people could—with their bodies shifting easily against each other and their expressions warm and raw and gentle. Kent’s stubble glitters in the light and Bitty’s hair is golden, like it’s been spun.

The fourth is Bitty’s favorite. It’s after, with Kent’s forehead pressed against Bitty’s and grins stretched across their faces. Bitty’s heart aches with the force of Kent’s smile.

“These really are great pictures,” Bitty says. They’ve been in the car for under an hour and Kent is squinting at road signs, looking for a Waffle House he swears he saw was on the way.

A sign up ahead confirms the Waffle House is off the next exit. Kent grunts triumphantly and throws the car into the right lane. “I was thinking I’d post one.”

Bitty turns to look at him. “Really?”

“Not right now,” Kent clarifies. He blares his horn at the truck next to them and brakes hard to merge behind it in time to make the exit. “Christ, we’ve got enough shit to deal with right now. But maybe—maybe when I retire or something. Just, I dunno. What the fuck can they take from me once I do that?”

Bitty thinks about Sunday mornings in Providence and wildfires and all the ways things go missing. He promises, “If you decide to, I’m there for it.”

Kent hums, squeezes Bitty’s hand, flips off the truck when pulls up next to it at the stoplight connecting to the highway. His fingers tap on the wheel and the red light does harsh, strange things to his freckles.

The phone rings.

Kent looks over and Bitty looks down and a car honks behind them because the light turns green, green on Kent’s face and Bitty’s hands and swallowed by the fluorescent white of an incoming call.

Kent turns the radio off and drives the car and says, half a question, “However it is, it’s us.”

The oxygen warps in Bitty’s lungs and the city on the other side of the windshield is nondescript, coated in ink with anonymous lights punching through, feeble reminders that people and things exist that he’s never touched.

The phone rings.

Bitty rolls down the window and cold desert air rushes in, thick with promised rain and the ache of swollen clouds, and Bitty leans his head outside to feel the wind whip and sting at his cheeks and—

 

Breathes.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I love Kent Parson with the entirety of my trash heart. Come scream with me about him [on Tumblr <3](http://www.yoursummerfrost.tumblr.com)


End file.
